19 May 1851 – 25 May 1851

Found the Arum triphyllum and the nodding trillium, or wake-robin, in Conant’s Swamp. An ash also in bloom there, and the sassafras quite striking. Also the fringed polygala by Conantum wood.

There is, no doubt, a perfect analogy between the life of the human being and that of the vegetable, both of the body and the mind. The botanist Gray says:— “The organs of plants are of two sorts:—1. Those of Vegetation, which are concerned in growth,—by which the plant takes in the aërial and earthy matters on which it lives, and elaborates them into the materials of its own organized substance; 2. Those of Fructification or Reproduction, which are concerned with the propagation of the species.” So is it with the human being. I am concerned first to come to my Growth, intellectually and morally (and physically, of course, as a means to this, for the body is the symbol of the soul), and then to bear my Fruit, do my Work, propagate my kind, not only physically but morally, not only in body but in mind. “The organs of vegetation are the Root, Stem, and Leaves. The Stem is the axis and original basis of the plant.” “The first point of the stem preëxists in the embryo (i. e. in the rudimentary plantlet contained within the seed): it is here called the radicle.” Such is the rudiment of mind, already partially developed, more than a bud, but pale, having never been exposed to the light, and slumbering coiled up, packed away in the seed, unfolded [sic]. Consider the still pale, rudimentary, infantine, radicle-like thoughts of some students, which who knows what they might expand to, if they should ever come to the light and air, if they do not become rancid and perish in the seed. It is not every seed that will survive a thousand years. Other thoughts further developed, but yet pale and languid, like shoots grown in a cellar. “The plant ... develops from the first in two opposite directions, viz. upwards [to expand in the light and air] to produce and continue the stem (or ascending axis), and downwards [avoiding the light] to form the root (or descending axis). The former is ordinarily or in great part aërial, the latter subterranean.” So the mind develops from the first in two opposite directions: upwards to expand in the light and air; and downwards avoiding the light to form the root. One half is aërial, the other subterranean. The mind is not well balanced and firmly planted, like the oak, which has not as much root as branch, whose roots like those of the white pine are slight and near the surface. One half of the mind’s development must still be root,—in the embryonic state, in the womb of nature, more unborn than at first. For each successive new idea or bud, a new rootlet in the earth. The growing man penetrates yet deeper by his roots into the womb of things. The infant is comparatively near the surface, just covered from the light; but the man sends down a tap-root to the centre of things. The mere logician, the mere reasoner, who weaves his arguments as a tree its branches in the sky,—nothing equally developed in the roots,—is overthrown by the first wind. As with the roots of the plant, so with the roots of the mind, the branches and branchlets of the root “are mere repetitions for the purpose of multiplying the absorbing points, which are chiefly the growing or newly formed extremities, sometimes termed spongelets. It bears no other organs.” So this organ of the mind’s development, the Root, bears no organs but spongelets or absorbing points. Annuals, which perish root and all the first season, especially have slender and thread-like fibrous roots. But biennials are particularly characterized by distended, fleshy roots containing starch, a stock for future growth, to be consumed during their second or flowering season,—as carrots, radishes, turnips. Perennials frequently have many thickened roots clustered together, tuberous or palmate roots, fasciculated or clustered as in the dahlia, pæony, etc. Roots may spring from any part of the stem under favorable circumstances; “that is to say in darkness and moisture, as when covered by the soil or resting on its surface.” That is, the most clear and ethereal ideas (Antæus-like) readily ally themselves to the earth, to the primal womb of things. They put forth roots as soon as branches; they are eager to be soiled. No thought soars so high that it sunders these apron-strings of its mother. The thought that comes to light, that pierces the empyrean on the other side, is wombed and rooted in darkness, a moist and fertile darkness,—its roots in Hades like the tree of life. No idea is so soaring but it will readily put forth roots. Wherever there is an air-and-light-seeking bud about to expand, it may become in the earth a darkness-seeking root. Even swallows and birds-of-paradise can walk on the ground. To quote the sentence from Gray entire: “Roots not only spring from the root-end of the primary stem in germination, but also from any subsequent part of the stem under favorable circumstances, that is to say, in darkness and moisture, as when covered by the soil or resting on its surface.” No thought but is connected as strictly as a flower, with the earth. The mind flashes not so far on one side but its rootlets, its spongelets, find their way instantly on the other side into a moist darkness, uterine,—a low bottom in the heavens, even miasma-exhaling to such immigrants as are not acclimated. A cloud is uplifted to sustain its roots. Imbosomed in clouds as in a chariot, the mind drives through the boundless fields of space. Even there is the dwelling of Indra. I might here quote the following, with the last—of roots: “They may even strike in the open air and light, as is seen in the copious aërial rootlets by which the Ivy, the Poison Ivy, and the Trumpet Creeper climb and adhere to the trunks of trees or other bodies; and also in Epiphytes or Air-plants, of most warm regions, which have no connection whatever with the soil, but germinate and grow high in air on the trunks or branches of trees, etc.; as well as in some terrestrial plants, such as the Banian and Mangrove, that send off aërial roots from their trunks or branches, which finally reach the ground.” So, if our light-and-air-seeking tendencies extend too widely for our original root or stem, we must send downward new roots to ally us to the earth. Also there are parasitic plants which have their roots in the branches or roots of other trees, as the mistletoe, the beech-drops, etc. There are minds which so have their roots in other minds as in the womb of nature,—if, indeed, most are not such?!

Yesterday I made out the black and the white ashes. A double male white ash in Miles’s Swamp, and two black ashes with sessile leaflets. A female white ash near railroad, in Stow’s land. The white ashes by Mr. Pritchard’s have no blossoms, at least as yet. If I am right, the black ash is improperly so called, from the color of its bark being lighter than the white. Though it answers to the description in other respects, even to the elder-like odor of the leaves, I should like still to see a description of the yellow ash which grows in made [sic]. The day before yesterday I found the male sassafras in abundance but no female. The leaves of my new pine on Merriam’s or Pine Hill are of intermediate length between those of the yellow pine and the Norway pine. I can find no cone to distinguish the tree by; but, as the leaves are semicylindrical and not hollowed I think it must be the red or Norway Pine, though it does not look very red, and is spruce! answering perhaps to the description of the yellow pine, which is sometimes called spruce pine. To-day examined the flowers of the Nemopanthes Canadensis,—a genus of a single species, says Emerson. It bears the beautiful crimson velvety berry of the swamps, and is what I have heard called the cornel. Common name wild holly.

And wilder still there grows elsewhere, I hear, a native and aboriginal crab-apple, Malus (as Michaux, or, as Emerson has it, Pyrus) coronaria in Southern States, and also angustifolia in the Middle States; whose young leaves “have a bitter and slightly aromatic taste” (Michaux), whose beautiful flowers perfume the air to a great distance. “The apples ... are small, green, intensely acid, and very odoriferous. Some farmers make cider of them, which is said to be excellent: they make very fine sweet-meats also, by the addition of a large quantity of sugar” (Michaux). Celebrated for “the beauty of its flowers, and for the sweetness of its perfume” (Michaux). Michaux says that the wild apple of Europe has yielded to cultivation nearly three hundred species in France alone. Emerson says, referring to Loudon, “In 1836, the catalogue and the gardens of the London Horticultural Society contained upwards of 1400 distinct sorts, and new ones are every year added.” But here are species which they have not in their catalogue, not to mention the varieties which the crab might yield to cultivation. This genus, so kind to the human race, the Malus or Pyrus; Rosaceæ the family, or others say Pomaceæ. Its flowers are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree. I am frequently compelled to turn and linger by some more than usually beautiful two-thirds-expanded blossoms. If such were not so common, its fame would be loud as well as wide. Its most copious and delicious blossoms. But our wild apple is wild perchance like myself, who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from the cultivated stock,—where the birds, where winged thoughts or agents, have planted or are planting me. Even these at length furnish hardy stocks for the orchard. You might call one Malus oculata; another M. Iridis; M. cum parvuli dæmonis oculis, or Imp-eyed; Blue-Jay Apple, or M. corvi cristati; Wood-Dell Apple (M. silvestri-vallis); Field-Dell Apple (M. campestri-vallis); Meadow Apple (M. pratensis); Rock Meadow Apple (saxopratensis); Partridge or Grouse Apple or bud [sic]; Apple of the Hesperides (Malus Hesperidum); Woodside Apple; Wood Apple (M. silvatica); the Truant’s Apple (M. cessatoris); Saunterer’s Apple (M. erronis vel vagabundi); the Wayside Apple (M. trivialis); Beauty of the Air (decus aëris); December-eating; Frozen-thawed (gelato-soluta or gelata regelata); the Concord Apple (M. Concordiensis); the Brindled Apple; Wine of New England (M. vinosa); the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple (M. viridis); the Dysentery or Cholera-morbus Apple. Distinctly related things are strangely near in fact, brush one another with their jackets. Perchance this window-seat in which we sit discoursing Transcendentalism, with only Germany and Greece stretching behind our minds, was made so deep because this was a few years ago a garrison-house, with thick log walls, bullet-proof, behind which men sat to escape the wild red man’s bullet and the arrow and the tomahawk, and bullets fired by Indians are now buried in its walls. Pythagoras seems near compared with them.

Our most glorious experiences are a kind of regret. Our regret is so sublime that we may mistake it for triumph. It is the painful, plaintively sad surprise of our Genius remembering our past lives and contemplating what is possible. It is remarkable that men commonly never refer to, never hint at, any crowning experiences when the common laws of their being were unsettled and the divine and eternal laws prevailed in them. Their lives are not revolutionary; they never recognize any other than the local and temporal authorities. It is a regret so divine and inspiring, so genuine, based on so true and distinct a contrast, that it surpasses our proudest boasts and the fairest expectations. My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning. I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place, and, in the act of reëntering its native body, had diffused an elysian fragrance around. The Genius says: “Ah! That is what you were! That is what you may yet be!” It is glorious for us to be able to regret even such an existence. A sane and growing man revolutionizes every day. What institutions of man can survive a morning experience? A single night’s sleep, if we have indeed slumbered and forgotten anything and grown in our sleep, puts them behind us like the river Lethe. It is no unusual thing for him to see the kingdoms of this world pass away.

A fine, freshening air, a little hazy, that bathes and washes everything, saving the day from extreme heat. Walked to the hills south of Wayland by the road by Deacon Farrar’s. First vista just beyond Merron’s (?), looking west down a valley, with a verdant-columned elm at the extremity of the vale and the blue hills and horizon beyond. These are the resting-places in a walk. We love to see any part of the earth tinged with blue, cerulean, the color of the sky, the celestial color. I wonder that houses are not oftener located mainly that they may command particular rare prospects, every convenience yielding to this. The farmer would never suspect what it was you were buying, and such sites would be the cheapest of any. A site where you might avail yourself of the art of Nature for three thousand years, which could never be materially changed or taken from you, a noble inheritance for your children. The true sites for human dwellings are unimproved. They command no price in the market. Men will pay something to look into a travelling showman’s box, but not to look upon the fairest prospects on the earth. A vista where you have the near green horizon contrasted with the distant blue one, terrestrial with celestial earth. The prospect of a vast horizon must be accessible in our neighborhood. Where men of enlarged views may be educated. An unchangeable kind of wealth, a real estate. There we found the celandine in blossom and the Ranunculus bulbosus, which we afterwards saw double in Wayland, having nine petals. The Pyrus arbutifolia, variety melanocarpa. Gray makes also the variety erythrocarpa. Is this the late red choke-berry of the swamps? and is the former the earlier black one of the swamps? By Farrar’s the Nepeta Glechoma, a kind of mint. Linnæus calls it Glechoma hederacea. Looks somewhat like catnep. The marsh-marigold, Caltha palustris, improperly called cowslip. The white oak, Quercus alba. And the commonest scrub oak, the bear or black oak, Q. ilicifolia. The chinquapin, or dwarf chestnut, oak, the smallest of our oaks, Q. prinoides. The Cratægus coccinea (?), or scarlet-fruited thorn (?) Another glorious vista with a wide horizon at the yellow Dutch house, just over the Wayland line, by the black spruce, heavy and dark as night, which we could see two or three miles as a landmark. Now at least, before the deciduous trees have fully expanded their leaves, it is remarkably black. It is more stoutly and irregularly branched than Holbrook’s spruces—has a much darker foliage; but the cone scales of both are slightly waved or notched. Are they, then, both black spruce? The cones are enough like, and the thickness of the leaves; their color enough unlike. Here is a view of the Jenkins house, the fish-pole house, and Wachusett beyond. Noticed what I think must be a young poison sumach abundant by the roadside in woods, with last year’s berries, with small greenish-yellow flowers, but leaves not pinnatifid, three together; from one to two feet high. What is it? Alnus serrulata, the common alder, with a grayish stem, leaves smooth on both sides. Alnus incana, the speckled alder, downy on under side of leaves. The hard-berried plant seems to be Andromeda ligustrina (?) of Gray, A. paniculata of Bigelow, Lyonia paniculata of Emerson. Thyme-leaved veronica, little bluish-white, streak-petalled flower by road sides. Silene Pennsylvanica. What is the orange-yellow aster-like flower of the meadows now in blossom with a sweet-smelling stem when bruised? What the delicate pinkish and yellowish flower with hoary-green stem and leaves, of rocky hills. Saw Bunker Hill Monument and Charlestown from the Wayland hills, and across the valleys to Milton Hill. Westward, or west by south, an island in a pond or in the river (!which see!) A grand horizon. Probably saw the elm between Wayland and Weston which is seen so far in the horizon from the northwest part of Sudbury. A good, a rare place this must be to view the Sudbury or Wayland meadows a little earlier. Came back across lots to the black spruce. Now, at 8.30 o’clock P. M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs. So it seems to me, and so significantly passes my life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs in a summer evening.