23 February 1852 – 29 February 1852

P. M.— Railroad causeway. I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air. The cock-crowing and even the telegraph harp pro- phesy it, though the ground is for the most part covered with snow. It is a natural resurrection, an experience of immortality. Observe the poplar’s swollen buds and the brightness of the willow’s bark.t The telegraph harp reminds me of Anacreon. That is the glory of Greece, that we are reminded of her only when in our best estate, our elysian days, when our senses are young and healthy again. I could find a name for every strain or intonation of the harp from one or other of the Grecian bards. I often hear Mimnermus, often Menander. I am too late by a day or two for the sand foliage on the east side of the Deep Cut. It is glorious to see the soil again, here where a shovel, perchance, will enter it and find no frost. The frost is partly come out of this bank, and it is become dry again in the sun. | The very sound of men’s work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring. As I now hear at a dis- tance the sound of the laborer’s sledge on the rails. The empressement of a little dog when he starts any wild thing in the woods! ‘The woods ring with his bark- ing as if the tragedy of Actzeon were being acted over again. Talked with two men and a boy fishing on Fair Haven, just before sunset. (Heard the dog bark in Baker’s wood as I came down the brook.) They had caught a fine parcel of pickerel and perch. The perch especially were full of spawn. The boy had caught a large bream which had risen to the surface, in his hands. They had none of them ever seen one before in the winter, though they sometimes catch chivins. They had also kicked to death a muskrat that was crossing the southwest end of the pond on the snow. They told me of two otters being killed in Sudbury this winter, beside some coons near here. As we grow older, is it not ominous that we have more to write about evening, less about morning? We must associate more with the early hours.

The east side of Deep Cut nearly dry; sand has ceased flowing; west side just beginning. Now begin to see the Cladonia rangiferina (“reindeer moss”) in the dry pastures. Observed for the first time on and about Bear Hill in Lincoln the Parmelia conspersa (?), “greenish straw-colored,” and what I suppose is P. saxatilis, “glaucous-cinerescent.” The P. conspersa is a very handsome and memorable lichen, which every child has admired. I love to find it where the rocks will split into their laminz so that I can easily carry away a specimen. The low hills in the northeast beyond Bedford, seen from Bear Hill about 4.30 Pp. m., were re- markably dark blue, much more blue than the moun- tains in the northwest. The sky was in great part con- cealed by white clouds. Had this blue the same cause with the blue in the crevices of the snow? Returned across Flint’s Pond and the wood-lot, where some Irishman must have tried his first experiment in chopping, his first winter, where the trees were hacked off two feet from the ground, as if with a hatchet, — standing on every side of the tree by turns, and cross- ing the carf a hundred ways. The owner can com- monly tell when an Irishman has trespassed on his wood-lot.

The mosses now are in fruit — or have sent up their filaments with calyptre. The main river is not yet open but in very few places, but the North Branch, which is so much more rapid, is open near Tarbell’s and Harrington’s, where I walked to-day, and, flowing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air, —a sil- very sparkle as from a stream that would not soil the sky. Half the ground is covered with snow. It is a mod- erately cool and pleasant day near the end of winter. We have almost completely forgotten summer. This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters, and as I stand looking up it westward for half a mile, | where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up here and there with a fine-grained silvery sparkle which makes the river appear something celestial, — more than a terrestrial river, — which might have sug- gested that which surrounded the shield in Homer. If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and im- mortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope? Have I no hopes to sparkle on the surface of life’s current ? It is worth the while to have our faith revived by see- ing where a river swells and eddies about a half-buried rock, — dimples on the surface of water. This has truly been a month of crusted snow. Now the snow-patches, which partially melt one part of the day or week, freeze at another, so that the walker traverses them with tolerable ease. Crossed the river on ice. To-night a circle round the moon. The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins (?). The bank by Tarbell’s road is a grand place for Clado- nia Scyphifere’ of various kinds.

To-day it snows again, covering the ground. To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly pene- trate our skin, and we be as it were turned inside out to it, and there be no part in us but is wet or weather- beaten, — so that we become storm men instead of fair- weather men. Some men speak of having been wetted to the skin once as a memorable event in their lives, which, notwithstanding the croakers, they survived. The snow is finally turned to a drenching rain.