Complete Prose Works Part 9

As I journey'd to-day in a light wagon ten or twelve miles through the country, nothing pleas'd me more, in their homely beauty and novelty (I had either never seen the little things to such advantage, or had never noticed them before) than that peculiar fruit, with its profuse clear-yellow dangles of inch-long silk or yarn, in boundless profusion spotting the dark green cedar bushes--contrasting well with their bronze tufts--the flossy shreds covering the k.n.o.bs all over, like a shock of wild hair on elfin pates. On my ramble afterward down by the creek I pluck'd one from its bush, and shall keep it. These cedar-apples last only a little while however, and soon crumble and fade.

SUMMER SIGHTS AND INDOLENCIES

_June 10th_.--As I write, 5-1/2 P.M., here by the creek, nothing can exceed the quiet splendor and freshness around me. We had a heavy shower, with brief thunder and lightning, in the middle of the day; and since, overhead, one of those not uncommon yet indescribable skies (in quality, not details or forms) of limpid blue, with rolling silver-fringed clouds, and a pure-dazzling sun. For underlay, trees in fulness of tender foliage--liquid, reedy, long-drawn notes of birds--based by the fretful mewing of a querulous cat-bird, and the pleasant chippering-shriek of two kingfishers. I have been watching the latter the last half hour, on their regular evening frolic over and in the stream; evidently a spree of the liveliest kind. They pursue each other, whirling and wheeling around, with many a jocund downward dip, splas.h.i.+ng the spray in jets of diamonds--and then off they swoop, with slanting wings and graceful flight, sometimes so near me I can plainly see their dark-gray feather-bodies and milk-white necks.

SUNDOWN PERFUME--QUAILNOTES--THE HERMIT-THRUSH

_June 19th, 4 to 6-1/2, P.M._--Sitting alone by the creek--solitude here, but the scene bright and vivid enough--the sun s.h.i.+ning, and quite a fresh wind blowing (some heavy showers last night,) the gra.s.s and trees looking their best--the clare-obscure of different greens, shadows, half-shadows, and the dappling glimpses of the water, through recesses--the wild flageolet-note of a quail near by--the just-heard fretting of some hylas down there in the pond--crows cawing in the distance--a drove of young hogs rooting in soft ground near the oak under which I sit--some come sniffing near me, and then scamper away, with grunts. And still the clear notes of the quail--the quiver of leaf-shadows over the paper as I write--the sky aloft, with white clouds, and the sun well declining to the west--the swift darting of many sand-swallows coming and going, their holes in a neighboring marl-bank--the odor of the cedar and oak, so palpable, as evening approaches--perfume, color, the bronze-and-gold of nearly ripen'd wheat--clover-fields, with honey-scent--the well-up maize, with long and rustling leaves--the great patches of thriving potatoes, dusky green, fleck'd all over with white blossoms--the old, warty, venerable oak above me--and ever, mix'd with the dual notes of the quail, the soughing of the wind through some near-by pines.

As I rise for return, I linger long to a delicious song-epilogue (is it the hermit-thrush?) from some bushy recess off there in the swamp, repeated leisurely and pensively over and over again. This, to the circle-gambols of the swallows flying by dozens in concentric rings in the last rays of sunset, like flashes of some airy wheel.

A JULY AFTER-NOON BY THE POND

The fervent heat, but so much more endurable in this pure air--the white and pink pond-blossoms, with great heart-shaped leaves; the gla.s.sy waters of the creek, the banks, with dense bushery, and the picturesque beeches and shade and turf; the tremulous, reedy call of some bird from recesses, breaking the warm, indolent, half-voluptuous silence; an occasional wasp, hornet, honey-bee or b.u.mble (they hover near my hands or face, yet annoy me not, nor I them, as they appear to examine, find nothing, and away they go)--the vast s.p.a.ce of the sky overhead so clear, and the buzzard up there sailing his slow whirl in majestic spirals and discs; just over the surface of the pond, two large slate-color'd dragon-flies, with wings of lace, circling and darting and occasionally balancing themselves quite still, their wings quivering all the time, (are they not showing off for my amus.e.m.e.nt?)--the pond itself, with the sword-shaped calamus; the water snakes--occasionally a flitting blackbird, with red dabs on his shoulders, as he darts slantingly by--the sounds that bring out the solitude, warmth, light and shade--the quawk of some pond duck--(the crickets and gra.s.shoppers are mute in the noon heat, but I hear the song of the first cicadas;)--then at some distance the rattle and whirr of a reaping machine as the horses draw it on a rapid walk through a rye field on the opposite side of the creek--(what was the yellow or light-brown bird, large as a young hen, with short neck and long-stretch'd legs I just saw, in flapping and awkward flight over there through the trees?)--the prevailing delicate, yet palpable, spicy, gra.s.sy, clovery perfume to my nostrils; and over all, encircling all, to my sight and soul, the free s.p.a.ce of the sky, transparent and blue--and hovering there in the west, a ma.s.s of white-gray fleecy clouds the sailors call "shoals of mackerel"--the sky, with silver swirls like locks of toss'd hair, spreading, expanding--a vast voiceless, formless simulacrum--yet may-be the most real reality and formulator of everything--who knows?

LOCUSTS AND KATY-DIDS

_Aug. 22_.--Reedy monotones of locust, or sounds of katydid--I hear the latter at night, and the other both day and night. I thought the morning and evening warble of birds delightful; but I find I can listen to these strange insects with just as much pleasure. A single locust is now heard near noon from a tree two hundred feet off, as I write--a long whirring, continued, quite loud noise graded in distinct whirls, or swinging circles, increasing in strength and rapidity up to a certain point, and then a fluttering, quietly tapering fall. Each strain is continued from one to two minutes. The locust-song is very appropriate to the scene--gushes, has meaning, is masculine, is like some fine old wine, not sweet, but far better than sweet.

But the katydid--how shall I describe its piquant utterances? One sings from a willow-tree just outside my open bedroom window, twenty yards distant; every clear night for a fortnight past has sooth'd me to sleep.

I rode through a piece of woods for a hundred rods the other evening, and heard the katydids by myriads--very curious for once; but I like better my single neighbor on the tree. Let me say more about the song of the locust, even to repet.i.tion; a long, chromatic, tremulous crescendo, like a bra.s.s disk whirling round and round, emitting wave after wave of notes, beginning with a certain moderate beat or measure, rapidly increasing in speed and emphasis, reaching a point of great energy and significance, and then quickly and gracefully dropping down and out. Not the melody of the singing-bird--far from it; the common musician might think without melody, but surely having to the finer ear a harmony of its own; monotonous--but what a swing there is in that bra.s.sy drone, round and round, cymballine--or like the whirling of bra.s.s quoits.

THE LESSON OF A TREE

_Sept. 1_.--I should not take either the biggest or the most picturesque tree to ill.u.s.trate it. Here is one of my favorites now before me, a fine yellow poplar, quite straight, perhaps 90 feet high, and four thick at the b.u.t.t. How strong, vital, enduring! how dumbly eloquent! What suggestions of imperturbability and _being_, as against the human trait of mere _seeming_. Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage. It _is_, yet says nothing. How it rebukes by its tough and equable serenity all weathers, this gusty-temper'd little whiffet, man, that runs indoors at a mite of rain or snow. Science (or rather half-way science) scoffs at reminiscence of dryad and hamadryad, and of trees speaking. But, if they don't, they do as well as most speaking, writing, poetry, sermons--or rather they do a great deal better. I should say indeed that those old dryad-reminiscences are quite as true as any, and profounder than most reminiscences we get. ("Cut this out," as the quack mediciners say, and keep by you.) Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more of those voiceless companions, and read the foregoing, and think.

One lesson from affiliating a tree--perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of _what is_, without the least regard to what the looker-on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse--what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, att.i.tude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about _seems_, (generally temporarily seems too,) and no trouble at all, or hardly any, about the sane, slow-growing, perennial, real parts of character, books, friends.h.i.+p, marriage--humanity's invisible foundations and hold-together? (As the all-basis, the nerve, the great-sympathetic, the plenum within humanity, giving stamp to everything, is necessarily invisible.)

_Aug. 4, 6 P.M._--Lights and shades and rare effects on tree-foliage and gra.s.s--transparent greens, grays, &c., all in sunset pomp and dazzle.

The clear beams are now thrown in many new places, on the quilted, seam'd, bronze-drab, lower tree-trunks, shadow'd except at this hour--now flooding their young and old columnar ruggedness with strong light, unfolding to my sense new amazing features of silent, s.h.a.ggy charm, the solid bark, the expression of harmless impa.s.siveness, with many a bulge and gnarl unreck'd before. In the revealings of such light, such exceptional hour, such mood, one does not wonder at the old story fables, (indeed, why fables?) of people falling into love-sickness with trees, seiz'd extatic with the mystic realism of the resistless silent strength in them--_strength_, which after all is perhaps the last, completest, highest beauty.

_Trees I am familiar with here_.

Oaks, (many kinds--one st.u.r.dy Willows.

old fellow, vital, green, bushy, Catalpas.

five feet thick at the b.u.t.t, I sit Persimmons.

under every day,) Mountain-ash.

Cedars plenty. Hickories.

Tulip trees, (_Liriodendron,_) is of Maples, many kinds.

the magnolia family--I have Locusts.

seen it in Michigan and southern Birches.

Illinois, 140 feet high and Dogwood.

8 feet thick at the b.u.t.t [A]; does Pine.

not transplant well; best rais'd the Elm.

from seeds--(the lumbermen Chesnut.

call it yellow poplar.) Linden.

Sycamores. Aspen.

Gum trees, both sweet and sour. Spruce.

Beeches. Hornbeam.

Black-walnuts. Laurel.

Sa.s.safras. Holly.

AUTUMN SIDE-BITS

_Sept. 20_.--Under an old black oak, glossy and green, exhaling aroma--amid a grove the Albic druids might have chosen--envelop'd in the warmth and light of the noonday sun, and swarms[10] of flitting insects--with the harsh cawing of many crows a hundred rods away--here I sit in solitude, absorbing, enjoying all. The corn, stack'd in its cone-shaped stacks, russet-color'd and sere--a large field spotted thick with scarlet-gold pumpkins--an adjoining one of cabbages, showing well in their green and pearl, mottled by much light and shade--melon patches, with their bulging ovals, and great silver-streak'd, ruffled, broad-edged leaves--and many an autumn sight and sound beside--the distant scream of a flock of guinea-hens--and pour'd over all the September breeze, with pensive cadence through the tree tops.

_Another Day_.--The ground in all directions strew'd with _debris_ from a storm. Timber creek, as I slowly pace its banks, has ebb'd low, and shows reaction from the turbulent swell of the late equinoctial. As I look around, I take account of stock--weeds and shrubs, knolls, paths, occasional stumps, some with smooth'd tops, (several I use as seats of rest, from place to place, and from one I am now jotting these lines,)--frequent wild-flowers, little white, star-shaped things, or the cardinal red of the lobelia, or the cherry-ball seeds of the perennial rose, or the many-threaded vines winding up and around trunks of trees.

_Oct. 1, 2 and 3_.--Down every day in the solitude of the creek. A serene autumn sun and westerly breeze to-day (3d) as I sit here, the water surface prettily moving in wind-ripples before me. On a stout old beech at the edge, decayed and slanting, almost fallen to the stream, yet with life and leaves in its mossy limbs, a gray squirrel, exploring, runs up and down, flirts his tail, leaps to the ground, sits on his haunches upright as he sees me, (a Darwinian hint?) and then races up the tree again.

_Oct. 4_.--Cloudy and coolish; signs of incipient winter. Yet pleasant here, the leaves thick-falling, the ground brown with them already; rich coloring, yellows of all hues, pale and dark-green, shades from lightest to richest red--all set in and toned down by the prevailing brown of the earth and gray of the sky. So, winter is coming; and I yet in my sickness. I sit here amid all these fair sights and vital influences, and abandon myself to that thought, with its wandering trains of speculation.

Note:

[10] There is a tulip poplar within sight of Woodstown, which is twenty feet around, three feet from the ground, four feet across about eighteen feet up the trunk, which is broken off about three or four feet higher up. On the south side an arm has shot out from which rise two stems, each to about ninety-one or ninety-two feet from the ground. Twenty-five (or more) years since the cavity in the b.u.t.t was large enough for, and nine men at one time, ate dinner therein. It is supposed twelve to fifteen men could now, at one time, stand within its trunk. The severe winds of 1877 and 1878 did not seem to damage it, and the two stems send out yearly many blossoms, scenting the air immediately about it with their sweet perfume. It is entirely unprotected by other trees, on a hill.--_Woodstown, N. J., "Register," April 15, '79_.

THE SKY--DAYS AND NIGHTS--HAPPINESS

_Oct. 20_.--A clear, crispy day--dry and breezy air, full of oxygen.

Out of the sane, silent, beauteous miracles that envelope and fuse me--trees, water, gra.s.s, sunlight, and early frost--the one I am looking at most to-day is the sky. It has that delicate, transparent blue, peculiar to autumn, and the only clouds are little or larger white ones, giving their still and spiritual motion to the great concave. All through the earlier day (say from 7 to 11) it keeps a pure, yet vivid blue. But as noon approaches the color gets lighter, quite gray for two or three hours--then still paler for a spell, till sun-down--which last I watch dazzling through the interstices of a knoll of big trees--darts of fire and a gorgeous show of light-yellow, liver-color and red, with a vast silver glaze askant on the water--the transparent shadows, shafts, sparkle, and vivid colors beyond all the paintings ever made.

I don't know what or how, but it seems to me mostly owing to these skies, (every now and then I think, while I have of course seen them every day of my life, I never really saw the skies before,) have had this autumn some wondrously contented hours--may I not say perfectly happy ones? As I have read, Byron just before his death told a friend that he had known but three happy hours during his whole existence. Then there is the old German legend of the king's bell, to the same point.

While I was out there by the wood, that beautiful sunset through the trees, I thought of Byron's and the bell story, and the notion started in me that I was having a happy hour. (Though perhaps my best moments I never jot down; when they come I cannot afford to break the charm by inditing memoranda. I just abandon myself to the mood, and let it float on, carrying me in its placid extasy.)

What is happiness, anyhow? Is this one of its hours, or the like of it?--so impalpable--a mere breath, an evanescent tinge? I am not sure--so let me give myself the benefit of the doubt. Hast Thou, pellucid, in Thy azure depths, medicine for case like mine? (Ah, the physical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last three years.) And dost Thou subtly mystically now drip it through the air invisibly upon me?

_Night of Oct. 28._--The heavens unusually transparent--the stars out by myriads--the great path of the Milky Way, with its branch, only seen of very clear nights--Jupiter, setting in the west, looks like a huge hap-hazard splash, and has a little star for companion.

Clothed in his white garments, Into the round and clear arena slowly entered the brahmin, Holding a little child by the hand, Like the moon with the planet Jupiter in a cloudless night-sky.

_Old Hindu Poem._

_Early in November._--At its farther end the lane already described opens into a broad gra.s.sy upland field of over twenty acres, slightly sloping to the south. Here I am accustom'd to walk for sky views and effects, either morning or sundown. To-day from this field my soul is calm'd and expanded beyond description, the whole forenoon by the clear blue arching over all, cloudless, nothing particular, only sky and daylight. Their soothing accompaniments, autumn leaves, the cool dry air, the faint aroma--crows cawing in the distance--two great buzzards wheeling gracefully and slowly far up there--the occasional murmur of the wind, sometimes quite gently, then threatening through the trees--a gang of farm-laborers loading cornstalks in a field in sight, and the patient horses waiting.

COLORS--A CONTRAST

Such a play of colors and lights, different seasons, different hours of the day--the lines of the far horizon where the faint-tinged edge of the landscape loses itself in the sky. As I slowly hobble up the lane toward day-close, an incomparable sunset shooting in molten sapphire and gold, shaft after shaft, through the ranks of the long-leaved corn, between me and the west. _Another day_--The rich dark green of the tulip-trees and the oaks, the gray of the swamp-willows, the dull hues of the sycamores and black-walnuts, the emerald of the cedars (after rain,) and the light yellow of the beeches.

NOVEMBER 8, '76