A rendering of Thoreau's cabin as it stood
by Walden Pond from 1845-1847.
While I was attending my garden, I heard the nearby creek rumbling,
the passing birds singing, and I felt the gentle and soft air flowing.
It is spring again !
I have this book “ In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World”, a
Sierra Club-Ballantine book, in my possession for years. Once in a
while, at different time or season of the year, I would pick it up and
peek through what the naturalist Henry David Thoreau had seen
and said at certain particular time of the year. And on this date,
March 10, 1859, he wrote:
” These earliest spring days are peculiarly pleasant. We shall have no
more of them for a year. .... . The combination of this delicious air,
which you do not want to be warmer or softer, with the presence of
ice and snow, you sitting on the bare russet portions, the south
hillsides, of the earth, this is the charm of these days. .... . “
“ I perceive the spring in the softened air … . Looking through this
transparent vapor, all surfaces, not osiers and open water alone, look
more vivid. The hardness of winter is relaxed. .... . “
And on March 13, 1842, (167 years ago today) he wrote:
“ Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the meditation of a
thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become
radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world, presented
us at different time, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or
death. For seen with the eye of the poet, as God sees them, all things
are alive and beautiful; but seen with the historic eye, or eye of the
memory, they are dead and offensive. If we see Nature as pausing,
immediately all modifies and decays; but see as progressing, she is
beautiful. ”
Yeh Tze
No comments:
Post a Comment