19 April 1852 – 25 April 1852

6 a.m.— Rain siill, a fine rain. The robin sang early this morning over the bare ground, an hour ago, nevertheless, ushering in the day. Then the guns were fired and the bells rung to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of a nation’s liberty. The birds must live on expectation now. There is nothing in nature to cheer them yet. That last flock of geese yesterday is still in my eye. After hearing their clangor, looking southwest, we saw them just appearing over a dark pine wood, in an irreg- ular waved line, one abreast of the other, as it were breasting the air and pushing it before them. It made you think of the streams of Cayster, etc., ete. They carry weight, such a weight of metal in the air. Their dark waved outline as they disappear. The grenadiers of the air. Man pygmifies himself at sight of these inhabitants of the air. These stormy days they-do not love to fly; they alight in some retired marsh or river. From their lofty pathway they can easily spy out the most extensive and retired swamp. How many there must be, that one or more flocks are seen to go over almost every farm in New England in the spring. That oak by Derby’s is a grand object, seen from any side. It stands like an athlete and defies the tem- pests in every direction. It has not a weak point. It is an agony of strength. Its branches look like stereo- typed gray lightning on the sky. But I fear a price is set upon its sturdy trunk and roots for ship-timber, for knees to make stiff the sides of ships against the Atlantic billows. Like an athlete, it shows its well- developed muscles. | I saw yesterday that the farmers had been out to save their fencing-stuff from the flood, and everywhere it was drawn above high-water mark. The North River had fallen nearly a foot, which I cannot account for, unless some of the dams above had broken away or been suddenly raised [sic]. This slight difference in the character of the tributaries of a river and their different histories and adventures is interesting, — all making one character at last. The willow catkin might be the emblem of spring. The buds of the lilac look ready to take advantage of the first warm day. The skin of my nose has come off in consequence of that burning of the sun reflected from the snow. A stormy day. 2 p. M.— With C. over Wood’s Bridge to Lee’s and back by Baker Farm. It is a violent northeast storm, in which it is very difficult and almost useless to carry an umbrella. I am soon wet to my skin over half my body. At first, and for a long time, I feel cold and as if I had lost some vital heat by it, but at last the water in my clothes feels warm to me, and I know not but I am dry. It is a wind to turn umbrellas. The meadows are higher, more wild and angry, and the waves run higher with more white to their caps than before this year. I expect to hear of shipwrecks and of damage done by the tide. This wind, too, keeps the water in the river. It is worth the while to walk to-day to hear the rumbling roar of the wind, as if it echoed through the hollow chambers of the air. It even sounds like thunder some- times, and when you pass under trees, oaks or elms, that overhang the road, the sound is more grand and stormy still. The wind sounds even in open fields as if on a roof over our heads. It sounds as if amid sails. The mists against the woods are seen driving by in upright columns or sections, as if separated by waves of air. Drifting by, they make a dimly mottled land- scape. What comes flapping low with heavy wing over the middle of the flood? Is it an eagle ora fish hawk? Ah, now he 1s betrayed, I know not by what motion, — a great gull, right in the eye of the storm. He holds not a steady course, but suddenly he dashes upward even like the surf of the sea which he frequents, showing the under sides of his long, pointed wings, on which do I not see two white spots? He suddenly beats up- ward thus as if to surmount the airy billows by a slant- ing course, as the teamster surmounts a slope. The swallow, too, plays thus fantastically and luxuriously and leisurely, doubling some unseen corners in the sky. Here is a gull, then, long after ice in the river. It is a fine sight to see this noble bird leisurely advan- cing right in the face of the storm. How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. When the phenomenon was not observed, it was not at all. I think that no man ever takes an original [sic], or detects a principle, without experiencing an inexpressible, as quite infi- nite and sane, pleasure, which advertises him of the dignity of that truth he has perceived. The thing that pleases me most within these three days is the discov- ery of the andromeda phenomenon. It makes all those parts of the country where it grows more attractive and elysian to me. It is a natural magic. These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world. At sight of any redness I am excited like a cow. To-day you can find arrowheads, for every stone is washed bright in the rain. On the Miles road, the Beomyces roseus is now in perfection. Seen on the clay-like surface, amid the dark dead birch and pine leaves, it looks like a mi- nute dull-pinkish bloom, a bloom on the earth, and passes for a terrene flower. It impresses me like a mildew passing into a higher type. It covers large tracts of ground there [with] a pink color. C. calls it flesh-colored, but it is high-colored for that. Observed the thistle again covered with the beads of rain-drops and tinged with purple on the edges of the leaves. It impressed me again as some rich fruit of the tropics ready to be eaten with a spoon. It sug- gests pineapples, custard-apples, or what is it? The pasture thistle. All the farmers’ cart-paths (for their meadow-hay) are now seen losing themselves in the water. In the midst of this storm I see and hear the robin still and the song sparrow, and see the bluebird also, and the crow, and a hawk a-hunting (a marsh hawk ?), and a blue woodpecker, I thought about the size of the hairy. The meadow from Lee’s cause- way, looking northeast against the storm, looks dark and, as C. says, slate-colored. I observe that, to get the dark color of the waves, you must not only look in the direction whence they come, but stand as low and nearly on a level with them as possible. If you are on the top of a hill, light is reflected upward to you from their surface. In all this storm and wet, see a muskrat’s head in the meadow, as if some one thrust up a mop from below, — literally a drowned rat. Such independence of the moods of nature! He does not care, if he knows, when it rains. Saw a woodchuck out in the storm. The elder buds are forward. I stood by Clematis Brook, hearing the wind roar in the woods and the water in the brook; and, trying to distinguish between these sounds, I at last concluded that the first was a drier sound, the last a wetter. There is a slight dry hum to the wind blowing on the twigs of the forest, a softer and more liquid splashing sound to the water falling on rocks.

Morning. —Storms still. The robin sings unfailingly each morning at the time the sun should rise, in spite of dreary rain. Some storms have much more wet in them than others, though they look the same to one in the house, and you cannot walk half an hour without being wet through, while in the others you may keep pretty dry a whole afternoon. Turned up the Juniperus repens on Conantum yesterday with my foot, which above had a reddish and rusty look; beneath it was of an unexpectedly fine glaucous tinge with a bright green inmixed. Like many things, it looks best in the rain. They have many birds for sale in Quincy Market next the fish-market. I observe that one cage bears permanently the label “ A good singer” tied to it. Every passer’s eye rests on it, and he thinks if he were to buy a bird it would be the occupant of that cage. When I go to Boston the next year I perceive that this cage still wears its label, and I suppose that they put a new bird into this cage without changing the label, as fast as they sell the old one. Any bird that is with- out a home goes into the cage thus labelled, whatever may be his vocal powers. No deception, no falsehood seems too stale to succeed. The bird-fancier who recommends his bird as “a good singer” finds cus- tomers by the means. Saw yesterday apparently freshly broken shells of tortoise eggs.

The storm still continues. When I walked in the storm day before yesterday, I felt very cold when my clothes were first wet through, but at last they, being saturated with water, were tight and kept out the air and fresh wet like a thicker and closer gar- ment, and, the water in them being warmed by my person, I felt warmer and even drier. The color of the water changes with the sky. It is as dull and sober as the sky to-day. The woodchuck has not far to go to his home. In foul weather, if he chooses, he can turn in anywhere. He lives on and in the earth. A little parasite on the skin of the earth, that knows the taste of clover and bean leaves and beetles. 2 p. M.— Another walk in the rain. The river is remarkably high. Nobody remembers when the water came into so many cellars. The water is up to the top of the easternmost end of the eastern- most iron truss on the south side of the stone bridge. It is over the Union Turnpike that was west of the bridge, so that it is impassable to a foot-traveller, and just over the road west of Wood’s Bridge. Of eight carriage roads leading into Concord, the water to my knowledge is now over six, v2z., Lee’s Bridge, the Corner road, Wood’s Bridge, Stone Bridge, Red Bridge (on both sides, full half a mile in all, over the walls), and the Turnpike. All of these are impassable to foot-travellers except Wood’s Bridge, where only a lady would be stopped. I should think that nine inches more would carry it over Flint’s Bridge road. How it is at the East Quarter schoolhouse I don’t know, nor at the further stone bridge and above, nor at Derby’s Bridge. It is probably over the road near Miles’s ia the Corner, and in two places on the Turnpike, perhaps between J. P. Brown’s and C. Miles’s. This may sug- gest how low Concord is situated. Most of the cellars on both sides of the main street east of our house have water in them, and some that are on high ground. All this has been occasioned by the repeated storms of snow and rain for a month or six weeks past, especially the melting of the deep snow of April 13th, and, added to this, the steady rain from Sunday morning, April 18th, to this moment, 8 p. m., April 21st. The element of water is in the ascendant. From the Poplar Hill, the expanse of water looks about as large on the south- west as the northeast. Many new islands are made, — of grassy and sometimes rocky knolls, and clumps of trees and bushes where there is no dry land. Straight willow hedges rising above the water in some places, marking the boundaries of some man’s improvements, look prettily. Some of the bushy islands on the Great Meadows are distinctly red at this distance, even a mile off, from the stems of some bush not red (dis- tinctly) in fair weather, wet now. Is it cornel ? In front of Peter’s.—The grass has been springing in spite of the snow and rain, and the earth has an increased greenish tinge, though it is still decidedly tawny. Men are out in boats in the rain for muskrats, ducks, and geese. It appears to me, as I stand on this hill, that the white houses of the village, seen through the whitish misty storm and rain, are a very suitable color and harmonize well with the scenery, like concen- . trations of the mist. It is a cheerful color in stormy weather. A few patches of snow are still left. The robins sing through the ceaseless rain, and the song sparrows, and I hear a lark’s plaintive strain. I am glad that men are so dispersed over the earth. The need of fuel causes woods to be left, and the use of cattle and horses requires pastures, and hence men live far apart and the walkers of every town have this wide range over forest and field. Sitting behind the wall on the height of the road beyond N. Barrett’s (for we have come down the north bank of the river), I love in this weather to look abroad and let my eye fall on some sandy hill clothed with pitch pines on its sides, and covered on its top with the whitish cladonia lichen, usually so dry but now saturated with water. It reminds me of northern regions. I am thinking of the hill near Tarbell’s, three quarters of a mile from me. They are agreeable colors to my eye, the green pine and, on the summit, the patches of whitish: moss like mildew seen through the mist and rain, for I think, perhaps, how much moisture that soil can bear, how grateful it is to it. Proceed toward Hubbard’s black birch hill. The grass is greenest in the hollows where some snow and ice are still left melting, showing by its greenness how much space they recently covered. On the east side of Ponkawtasset I hear a robin sing- ing cheerily from some perch in the wood, in the midst of the rain, where the scenery is now wild and dreary. His song a singular antagonism and offset to the storm. As if Nature said, “Have faith, these two things I can do.”’ It sings with power, lke a bird of great faith that sees the bright future through the dark present, to re- assure the race of man, like one to whom many talents were given and who will improve its talents. They are sounds to make a dying man live. They sing not their despair. It is a pure, immortal melody. The side of the hill is covered first with tall birches rising from a reddish ground, just above a small swamp; then comes a white pine wood whose needles, covered with the fine rain-drops, have a light sheen on them. I see one pine that has been snapped off half-way up in the storm, and, seen against the misty background, it.is a distinct yellow mark. The sky is not one ho- mogeneous color, but somewhat mottled with darker clouds and white intervals, and anon it rains harder than before. (I saw the other day the rootlets which spring from the alder above the ground, so tenacious of the earth is it.) Was that a large shad-bush where Father’s mill used to be? There is quite a waterfall beyond, where the old dam was. Where the rapids commence, at the outlet of the pond, the water is singularly creased as it rushes to the fall, like braided hair, as the poet has it. I did not see any inequalities in the rock it rushed over which could make it so plaited. Here is enough of that suds which in warm weather disperses such a sense of coolness through the air. Sat under the dark hemlocks, gloomy hemlocks, on the hillside beyond. In a stormy day like this there is the gloom of night beneath them. The ground be- neath them almost bare, with wet rocks and fine twigs, without leaves (but hemlock leaves) or grass. The birds are singing in the rain about the small pond in front, the inquisitive chickadee that has flown at once to the alders to reconnoitre us, the blackbirds, the song sparrow, telling of expanding buds. But above all the robin sings here too, I know not at what distance in the wood. “Did he sing thus in Indian days?” I ask myself; for I have always associated this sound with the village and the clearing, but now I do detect the aboriginal wildness in his strain, and can imagine him a woodland bird, and that he sang thus when there was no civilized ear to hear him, a pure forest melody even like the wood thrush. Every genuine thing retains this wild tone, which no true culture displaces. I heard him even as he might have sounded to the Indian, singing at evening upon the elm above his wigwam, with which was associated in the red man’s mind the events of an Indian’s life, his child- hood. Formerly I had heard in it only those strains which tell of the white man’s village life; now I heard those strains which remembered the red man’s life, such as fell on the ears of Indian children, —as he sang when these arrowheads, which the rain has made shine so on the lean stubble-field, were fastened to their shaft. Thus the birds sing round this piece of water, some on the alders which fringe, some farther off and higher up the hills; it is a centre to them. Here stand buttonwoods, an uncommon tree in the woods, naked to look at, and now covered with little tufts of twigs on the sides of the branches in consequence of the disease which has attacked them. The singing of birds implies fair weather. I see where some farmer has been at pains to knock to pieces the manure which his cattle have dropped in the pasture, so to spread it over the sward. The yellow birch is to me an interesting tree from its re- markable and peculiar color, like a silvery gold. In the pasture beyond the brook, where grow the barberries, huckleberries, —creeping juniper, etc., are half a dozen huge boulders, which look grandly now in the storm, covered with greenish-gray lichens, alternating with the slatish-colored rock. Slumbering, silent, like the exuvize of giants; some of their cattle left. From a height I look down on some of them as on the backs of oxen. A certain personality, or at least brute life, they seem to have. C. calls it Boulder Field. There is a good prospect southward over the pond, between the two hills, even to the river meadows now. As we stand by the monument on the Battle-Ground, I see a white pine dimly in the horizon just north of Lee’s Hill, at 5.30 p. M., its upright stem and straight horizontal feathered branches, while at the same time I hear a robin sing. Each enhances the other. That tree seems the emblem of my life; it stands for the west, the wild. The sight of it is grateful to me as to a bird whose perch it is to be at the end of a weary flight. I [am] not sure whether the music I hear is most in the robin’s song or in its boughs. My wealth should be all in pine-tree shillings. The pine tree that stands on the verge of the clearing, whose boughs point west- ward; which the village does not permit to grow on the common or by the roadside; which is banished from the village; in whose boughs the crow and the hawk have their nests. We have heard enough nonsense about the Pyramids. If Congress should vote to rear such structures on the prairies, to-day, I should not think it worth the while, nor be interested in the enterprise. It was the foolish undertaking of some tyrant. “But,” says my neighbor, “when they were built, all men believed in them and were inspired to build them.’”” Nonsense! nonsense! I believe that they were built essentially in the same spirit in which the public works of Egypt, of England, and America are built to-day,—the Mahmoudi Canal, the Tubular Bridge, Thames Tunnel, and the Washington Monument. The inspiring motive in the actual builders of these works is garlic, or beef, or potatoes. For meat and drink and the necessaries of life men can be hired to do many things. “Ah,” says my neighbor, “but the stones are fitted with such nice joints!” But the joints were nicer yet before they were disjointed in the quarry. Men are wont to speak as if it were a noble work to build a pyramid, — to set, forsooth, a hundred thousand Irishmen at work at fifty cents a day to piling stone. As if the good joints could ennoble it, if a noble motive was wanting! To ramble round the world to see that pile of stones which ambitious Mr. Cheops, an Egyptian booby, lke some Lord Timothy Dexter, caused a hundred thousand poor devils to pile up for low wages, which contained for all treasure the thigh-bone of a cow. The tower of Babel has been a good deal laughed at. It was just as sensible an undertaking as the Pyramids, which, because they ‘were completed and have stood to this day, are admired. I don’t believe they made a better joint than Mr. Crab, the joiner, can.’ I have not this season heard more robins sing than this rainy day.

It still rains. The water is over the road at Flint’s Bridge, and, as I am told, has been for some time over the J. Miles road in the Corner, and near the further stone bridge. So that there is now only the Boston road open, unless we regard the Walden road as coming from Wayland and not from Lee’s Bridge. At’9 a. M. it was five and one half inches higher than the east end of the eastern truss, horizon- tal part, on the south side of the stone bridge. Up to the top of the lowest stone step on the north side east end of railroad bridge. Mr. Stacy thinks it was higher thirty years ago, when a man, horse, and sleigh were washed off the Red Bridge road and lodged against a tree in the meadow. And Sam Barrett thinks it was about one foot higher some thirty-five years ago. Water a foot deep on Wood’s Bridge road. Abel Hunt saw a flock of geese this morning. This flood tempts men to build boats. I saw two on the stocks this morning. It is pleasant work to see progressing. ' [See Walden, p. 64; Riv. 93.] P. M.— Up river on east side. It takes this day to clear up gradually; successive sun-showers still make it foul. But the sun feels very warm after the storm. This makes five stormy days. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The water, slightly agitated, looks bright when the sun shines. Saw four hawks soaring high in the heavens over the Swamp Bridge Brook. At first saw three; said to myself there must be four, and found the fourth. Glad are they, no doubt, to be out after being confined by the storm. I hear bees (?) humming near the brook, which reminded me of the telegraph harp. I love to see the dull gravity, even stolidity, of the farmer opposed to the fluency of the lawyer or official ‘person. The farmer sits silent, not making any pre- tensions nor feeling any responsibility even to appre- hend the other, while the Judge or Governor talks ghbly and with official dispatch, all lost on the farmer, who minds it not, but looks out for the main chance, with his great inexpressive face and his two small eyes, looking the first in the face and rolling a quid in the back part of his mouth. The lawyer is wise in deeds, but the farmer, who buys land, puts the pertinent questions respecting the title. i observe the Parmelia saxatilis in many places, now turned a pinkish. The yellow lily leaves appear no more advanced than when [| first observed them. A strange dog accompanied us to-day, a hunting dog, gyrating about us at a great distance, beating every bush and barking at the birds, with great speed, gyrat- ing his tail too all the while. I thought of what Gilpin says, that he sailed and steered by means of his tail. Sat under Potter’s oak, the ground thickly strewn with broken acorn shells and cups and twigs, the short, close-nibbled sward of last year. Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet. From Cliffs see much snow on the mountains. ‘The pine on Lee’s shore of the pond, seen against the light water this cloudy weather from part way down the Cliff, is an agreeable object to me. When the outline and texture of white pine is thus seen against the water or the sky, it is an affecting sight. The shadow of the Cliff on Conantum in the semi-sunshine, with indistinct edge and a reddish tinge from bushes here and there! I want things to be incredible, — too good to appear true. C. says, “After you have been to the post-office once you are damned!” But I answer that it depends somewhat on whether you get a letter or not. If you should not get a letter there is some hope for you. If you would be wise, learn science and then forget it. A boat on the river, on the white surface, looks black, and the boatman like Charon. I see swarms of gnats in the air. What is that grass with a yellow blossom which I find now on the Cliff?! It is the contrast between sunshine and storm that is most pleasing; the gleams of sun- shine in the midst of the storm are the most memorable. Saw that winkle-like fungus, fresh and green, covering an oak stump to-day with concentric marks, spirally Carex marginata (?), early sedge, the earliest grass [sic] that flowers. 1852) THE STRAIN OF THE RED-WING 457 arranged, sometimes in a circle, very handsome. I love this apparent exuberance of nature. The maples in the side swamp near Well Meadow are arranged nearly in a circle in the water. This stranger dog has good habits for a companion, he keeps so distant. He never trusts himself near us, though he accompanies us for miles. On the most retired, the wild- est and craggiest, most precipitous hillside you will find some old road by which the teamster carted off the wood. It is pleasant sometimes looking thirty or forty rods into an open wood, where the trunks of the trees are plainly seen, and patches of soft light on the ground. The hylas peep now in full chorus, but are silent on myside of the pond. The water at 6 P.M. is one and a half inches higher than in the morning, 2. e. seven inches above the iron truss. The strain of the red-wing on the willow spray over the water to-night is hiquid, bubbling, watery, almost like a tinkling fountain, in perfect harmony with the meadow. It oozes, trickles, tinkles, bubbles from his throat, — bob-y-lee-e-e, and then its shrill, fine whistle. The villagers walk the streets and talk of the great rise of waters. At 10 p. M. the northern lights are flashing, like some grain sown broadcast in the sky. I hear the hylas peep on the meadow as I stand at the door. The early sedge (?) grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, 2. e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass.

The water has risen one and a half inches at six this morning since last night. It is now, then, eight and a half inches above the iron truss, 2. e. the horizontal part of it." There is absolutely no pass- ing, in carriages or otherwise, over Hubbard’s and the Red Bridge roads, and over none [sic] of the bridges for foot-travellers. ‘Throughout this part of the coun- try most people do not remember so great a flood, but, judging from some accounts, it was probably as high here thirty-five years ago. The willow catkins have made but little progress for a week. They have suf- fered from the cold rain and wind, and are partly blasted. It is a pleasant sight, among the pleasantest, at this season, to see the at first reddish anthers of the sterile catkins of our earliest willow bursting forth on their upper sides like rays of sunshine from amidst the downy fog, turning a more and more lively yellow as the pollen appears, —like a flash of sulphur. It is like the sun bursting out of a downy cloud or mists. I hear this morning, in the pine woods above the railroad bridge, for the first time, that delicious cool-sounding wetter-wetter-wetter-wetter-wet’ from that small bird (pine warbler ?) in the tops of the pines.” I associate it with the cool, moist, evergreen spring woods. The wood pewee* on an elm sings now peer-r-weet peer-r-weet, peer-wee’. It is not the simple peer-r-wet * Greatest height. Vide Aug. 23d, when apparently it was as low as any time that year. * Vide April 24 [p. 464]. * [This is queried in pencil after the word “wood.” The bird must have been a pheebe.] peer-r-wee’ that I heard at first. Will it not change next to that more tender strain? Vegetation starts when the earth’s axis is sufficiently inclined; 7. e. it follows the sun. Insects and all the smaller animals (as well as many larger) follow vege- tation. The fishes, the small fry, start probably for this reason; worms come out of the trees; buffaloes finally seek new pastures; water-bugs appear on the water, etc., etc. Next, the large fish and fish hawks, etc., follow the small fry; flycatchers follow the in- sects and worms. (The granivorous birds, who can depend on the supplies of dry seeds of last year, are to some extent independent of the seasons, and can re- main through the winter or come early in the spring, and they furnish food for a few birds of prey at that season.) Indians follow the buffaloes; trout, suckers, etc., follow the water-bugs, etc.; reptiles follow vege- tation, insects, and worms; birds of prey, the fly- catchers, ete. Man follows all, and all follow the sun. The greater or less abundance of food determines mi- grations. If the buds are deceived and suffer from frost, then are the birds. The great necessary of life for the brute creation is food; next, perhaps, shelter, 2. €. a suitable climate; thirdly, perhaps, security from foes. The storm may be said to have fairly ended last night. I observed yesterday that it was drier in most fields, pastures, and even meadows that were not reached by the flood, «mmediately after this remarka- ble fall of water than at the beginning. The condition of the fields has been steadily improving for walkers. I think one reason is that there was some frost in the ground which the rain melted, so that the ground soaked up the water. But no doubt it goes to prove the dryness of our sandy soil and absence of springs. At 6 p. M. the water has fallen an inch and a half. Heard the pigeon woodpecker to-day, that long- continued unmusical note, — somewhat like a robin’s, heard afar, — yet pleasant to hear because associated with a more advanced stage of the season. Saw the Fringilla hyemalis to-day, lingering still.

6 a. M.— Water has fallen an inch and a half since last night, — which is at a regular rate. I know two species of men. The vast majority are men of society. They live on the surface; they are interested in the transient and fleeting; they are like driftwood on the flood. They ask forever and only the news, the froth and scum of the eternal sea. They use policy; they make up for want of matter with manner. They have many letters to write. Wealth and the ap- probation of men is to them success. ‘The enterprises of society are something final and sufficing for them. The world advises them, and they listen to its advice. They live wholly an evanescent life, creatures of cir- cumstance. It is of prime importance to them who is the president of the day. They have no knowledge of truth, but by an exceedingly dim and transient in- stinct, which stereotypes the church and some other institutions. They dwell, they are ever, right in my face and eyes like gnats; they are like motes, so near the eyes that, looking beyond, they appear like blurs; they have their being between my eyes and the end of my nose. ‘The terra firma of my existence lies far be- yond, behind them and their improvements. If they write, the best of them deal in “elegant literature.” Society, man, has no prize to offer me that can tempt me; not one. That which interests a town or city or: any large number of men is always something trivial, as politics. It is impossible for me to be interested in what interests men generally. Their pursuits and in- terests seem to me frivolous. When I am most myself and see the clearest, men are least to be seen; they are like muscae volitantes, and that they are seen at all is the proof of imperfect vision. These affairs of men are so narrow as to afford no vista, no distance; it is a shallow foreground only, no large extended views to be taken. Men put to me frivolous questions: When did I come? where am I going? That was a more pertinent question, — what I lectured for? — which one auditor put once to another. What an ordeal it were to make men pass through, to consider how many ever put to you a vital question! Their know- ledge of something better gets no further than what is called religion and spiritual knockings. Now that the sun shines and the sky is blue, the water is a dark blue which in the storm was light or whitish. It follows the sky’s, though the sky is a lighter blue. | The lilac buds have looked as forward as any for many weeks. 2 p. M.— To Carlisle Bridge via Flint’s Bridge, bank of river, rear of Joel Barrett’s, returning by bridle- road. The elms are now fairly in blossom. It is one of those clear, washing days, — though the air is cold, —such as succeed a storm, when the air is clear and flowing, and the cultivated ground and the roads shine. Passed Flint’s road on the wall. Sorrel is well under weigh, and cinquefoil. White oaks still hold their leaves. The pitch pine is a cheerful tree at this season, with its lively yellow-green in the sunshine, while the landscape is still russet and dead-grass colored. Sitting by the road beyond N. Barrett’s, the colors of the world are: overhead a very light blue sky, darkest in the zenith, lightest in the horizon, with scattered white clouds seeming thickest in the horizon; all around the undulating earth a very light tawny color, from the dead grass, with the reddish and gray of for- ests mingled with evergreen; and, in the lap of earth, very dark blue rippled water, answering to the light blue above; the shadows of clouds flitting over all below; the spires of woods fringing the horizon on every side, and, nearer, single trees here and there seen with dark branches against the sky. This tawny ground divided by walls and houses, white, light slate, and red sprinkled here and there. Ball’s Hill and the rest are deep sunk in the flood. The level water-line appears to best advantage when it appears thus to cut the trees and hills. It looks as if the water were just poured into its basin and simply stood so high. No permanent shore gives you this pleasure. Saw the honey-bees on the staminate flowers of the willow catkins by the roadside (such as I described April 23d), with little bottles of the yellow pollen, apparently, as big as pin-heads on their thighs. With these flowers, then, come bees. Is there honey in staminate flowers ? The innocent odor of spring flowers, flavorless, as a breakfast. They will be more spiced by and by. Went over the cladonia hills toward Tarbell’s. A small tree, an oak for instance, looks large on a bare hilltop. The farmers, whom the storm has delayed, are busily plowing and overhauling their manure. Observed the ants at work on a large ant-heap. They plainly begin as soon as the snow is off and the ground thawed. Gold-thread, an evergreen, still bright in the swamps. The rattlesnake-plantain has fresh leaves. A wall running over the top of a rocky hill, with the light seen through its chinks, has a pretty effect. The sparrows, frogs, rabbits, etc., are made to re- semble the ground for their protection; but so is the hawk that preys on them; but he is of a lighter color beneath, that creeping things over which he hovers may confound him with the sky. ‘The marsh hawk is not easily distinguished from the meadow or the stems of the maples. The water is still over the cause- way on both sides of Carlisle Bridge for a long dis- tance. It is a straight flood now for about four miles. Fortunately for the bridge the wind has not been very high since the flood was at its height. The leaves of the hardhack, curled up, show their white under sides. On the bridle-road observed the interesting light-crim- son star-like flowers of the hazel, the catkins being now more yellowish. ‘This is a singular and interest- ing part of Concord, extensive and rather flat rocky pastures without houses or cultivated fields on any but this unused bridle-road, from which I hear the frogs peep. These are Channing’s “‘ moors.’ He went in on this road to chop, and this is the scene of his ‘“¢ Woodman.” Heard again (in the village) that vetter-vetter-vetter- vetter-vet’, or tchi-tchi-tcht-tch1-tchi-tchi-tchi’ very rapidly repeated, which I heard April 23d, and perhaps the same that I saw April 17th (described April 18th).? I am pretty sure it is the pine warbler, yellow beneath, with faint olivaceous marks on the sides, olivaceous above, tail forked, about the size of a yellow-bird. I have not seen the fox-colored sparrow for some weeks. ‘Thought I saw a loon on Walden yesterday.

Itis related that Giorgio Barbarelli, Titian’s friend, defending painting against the charge of being an incomplete art because it could exhibit but one side of a picture, laid a wager with some sculptor that he could represent the back, face, and both pro- files of a man, without the spectator being obliged to walk round it as a statue. He painted “a warrior, who, having his back turned towards the spectator, stood looking at himself in a fountain, in whose limpid waters his full front figure was reflected. At the left * [See p. 433, where the bird described would seem to be a yellow palm, or yellow redpoll, warbler.] of the warrior was suspended his suit of polished steel armor, in which was mirrored, with exact fidelity, the whole of his left side. At the right was painted a look- ing-glass, which reflected that side;” and thus he won the wager. So I would fain represent some truths as roundly and solidly as a statue, or as completely and in all their relations as Barbarelli his warrior, — so that you may see round them. 1.30 p. M.— Up railroad, returning through Acton via powder-mills and Second Division. The frogs peep at midday. The bees are on the pis- tillate flowers of the early willows, — the honey-bee, a smaller, fly-like bee with very transparent wings and bright-yellow marks on the abdomen, and also a still smaller bee, more like the honey-bee. ‘They all hum like summer. ‘The water in the meadow beyond J. Hos- mer’s is still and transparent, and I hear the more stertorous sound or croak of frogs from it, such as you associate with sunny, warmer, calm, placid spring weather. The tortoises are out sunning. The painted tortoise on a tussock. A spotted tortoise on the rail- road hisses when I touch it with my foot and draws its [head] in. What is that bird on the willows, size of a vireo, yellow below, with darker lines, chestnut crown, whitish (?) line over eye, two white feathers in tail, yellow-olive back, darker tail? * Yarrow is started. Saw the first kingfisher, and heard his most unmusical note. That warmer, placid pool and stertorous sound of frogs must not be forgotten, — beneath the railroad causeway. ‘The bees hum on the early willows that grow in the sand. They appear to have nearly stripped the sterile flowers of their pollen, and each has its little yellow parcel. The year is stretching itself, is waking up. If a small oak on a bare hilltop looks large, a large one looks small. That one by Derby’s stand, two rods off, looks no bigger than a corpulent man; go close up to it, and it dwarfs an ox, it is as broad as a cart or a wood-shed door. That is a handsome elm by Derby’s Bridge, with nine branches springing from near the ground. Near the factory, a willow with small reddish catkins just beginning to expand looks like a peach tree with its blossom-buds. Found in the midst of the woods in Acton, on the Concord line, a small shanty or shed, whitewashed, which I mistook at first, through the trees, for a white marble tomb with a slight clearing about it. Is it a bowling-alley? Is it a pigeon-place? What means this sign on the tree, “O. B. Trask”? that rocking-chair under a pine? Went through a kind of gate into a little green patch which had been spaded up the previous year, about a quarter of an acre cleared, and winter rye coming up on a part of it. ‘The shed was locked; no trace of a recent inhabitant or visitor; window a bit of glass no bigger than your hand, flat against a joist; sign on the roof, “Any pirson who shall Burn or dis- troy this bilding is liable to 15 years imprisonment;” one or two herbs, catnip or balm, about the door, pro- tected with sticks; a sunken barrel to catch the drip of the eaves; the stones picked up and thrown into heaps; a kind of small truck; another sign, “O. B. Trask T. line,” cut on a board and nailed to a pine. It makes a sad impression, like a poorhouse or hospital. Is he insane or of sound, serene mind? Is he weak, or is he strong? If I knew that the occupant was a cheer ful, strong, serene man, how rejoiced I should be to see his shanty! That steep hill west of the Concord line, from which the autumnal view is got, is covered on the top with that short moss now in fruit. The filaments, seen singly and close to, are of a varnished-mahogany color, but seen in dense masses, as you approach the summit in the ascent, with the sunlight on them, they are a light crimson surmounted with the whitish capsules. It has a very rich effect like a sort of crimson mould or mil- dew, flower-like. ‘The bare top of the hill is covered with sere tufts of fine grass, this crimson moss, that reddish frosted (?) saxifrage (?) in patches, and with cladonias, with much bare pebbly earth. In the rear of the Major Heywood house, lay on the sere grass in a long pasture bounded by a pitch pine wood and heard the robin sing. What different tints of blue in the same sky! It requires to be parted by white clouds that the delicacy and depth of each part may appear. Beyond a narrow wisp or feather of mist, how different the sky! Sometimes it is full of light, especially toward the horizon. The sky is never seen to be of so deep and delicate a blue as when it is seen between downy clouds. The mayflower is well budded and ready to blossom, but not yet out; nor the andromeda, nor saxifrage, nor violet, that I can find. I am surprised to find the cowslip in full bloom at Second Division Meadow, numerous flowers. Growing in the water, it is not, comparatively, so backward this year perhaps. Its heart or kidney shaped, crenate green leaves, which had not freshly grown when I was here before, have suddenly pushed up. ‘The snows soon melted on this meadow. The horse-tail * too is in flower.?, And what is that low, regular, red-leaved and red-rooted plant in the meadow with the cowshp?* Yet we walk over snow and ice a long distance in the road here. I hear the first wood thrush singing faintly and at a distance. The hills are yet the color of a Roxbury russet, 7. e. a russet without the red. Heard from a chickadee a note like one of the notes of a brown thrasher. Saw a dande- lion in blossom at Jenny’s in the water. Water over the road still, beyond J. P. Brown’s, toward C. Miles. We have reached the Clamshell Hill. The setting sun, which we do not see behind Loring’s wood, which we have not seen for an hour or two behind dark dull clouds in the west, is falling bright and warm at last on the eastern hills and woods, and the windows of the village, which are as bright as itself. It is best to see it thus from the shade. Now the sun is set, and we have turned the point of Loring’s wood and see a long, low gilded cloud just above the horizon, so low that the fluc- tuating, seething (?) over the fields produces a tremu- lous motion which the beholder refers to the gilded edge of that far-distant cloud. I do not remember to have seen this watery trembling in the horizon before. * Sheds its pollen in the house the 27th, abundant and pea-green. * Meadow saxifrage.