The gallery manager was busy
“Already, by the first of September, I had seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. Ah, many a tale their color told! And gradually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls.’’
— From Walden, by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
‘Upon a winter’s morn’
Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
Which outward nature wears,
And in its fashion's hourly change
It all things else repairs.
In vain I look for change abroad,
And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
Illumes my inmost mind.
What is it gilds the trees and clouds,
And paints the heavens so gay,
But yonder fast-abiding light
With its unchanging ray?
Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,
Upon a winter's morn,
Where'er his silent beams intrude
The murky night is gone.
How could the patient pine have known
The morning breeze would come,
Or humble flowers anticipate
The insect's noonday hum,—
Till the new light with morning cheer
From far streamed through the aisles,
And nimbly told the forest trees
For many stretching miles?
I've heard within my inmost soul
Such cheerful morning news,
In the horizon of my mind
Have seen such orient hues,
As in the twilight of the dawn,
When the first birds awake,
Are heard within some silent wood,
Where they the small twigs break,
Or in the eastern skies are seen,
Before the sun appears,
The harbingers of summer heats
Which from afar he bears.
“The Inward Morning,’’ by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), of Concord, Mass.
Replica of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond, with statue of the writer
The delights of temporary depopulation
Aug. 5, 2014
A mild and humid early morning. Shafts of sunlight glow through the haze. The streets are bordered, and in some stretches topped, by a great lushness, except that some leaves in the trees are starting to wilt and fall off because of summer fatigue. I wonder how late most of the leaves will stay on their trees this fall, which some forecasters say will be warmer than average. Indian summer until well into December?
The best thing about walking in the early morning, besides the freshness of the air, is the absence of people -- that near-constant source of trouble and weariness. If only we could all live from time to time in a cabin at Walden Pond, of course with such nearby friends as the Emersons to mooch off .