Tag: Henry D. Thoreau

Summer’s end. Autumn’s perfection.

September 27th, 2025
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And because our summers were always ending, and because they lasted forever, we grew impatient with our games, we sought new and more intense ones; and as the crickets of August grew louder, and a single red leaf appeared on branches green with summer, we threw ourselves as if desperately into new adventures, while the long days, never changing, grew heavy with boredom and longing. 
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From one of my favorite short stories Flying Carpets, by Steven Millhauser. It might be my favorite short story. Is there any other description of summer so true, going to fall so true, that has ever been put on the page? I doubt it.

Maybe Thoreau?

Steven Millhauser, The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (New York: Crown Publishers, 1998), 77.

Henry D. Thoreau’s month of painted leaves.

October 1st, 2024

     October is the month of painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later twilight.

- Henry D. Thoreau

Kick off October with Henry D. Thoreau.

Again from his essay Autumnal Tints.

Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013. p. 283

A cheek toward the sun

September 27th, 2024

But I am more interested in the rosy cheek than I am to know what particular diet the maiden fed on. The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness, — as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever a cheek toward the sun.

– Henry Thoreau

I didn’t realize how poetic Thoreau’s prose was. That’s why one must read, must discover, these works for yourself.

Experience them on your own.

Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013. p. 282

Autumn in America with Henry D. Thoreau

September 25th, 2024

Europeans coming to America are surprised by the brilliancy of our autumnal foliage. There is no account of such a phenomenon in English poetry, because the trees acquire but few bright colors there. The most that Thomson says on this subject is his "Autumn" is contained in the lines, --

     "But see the fading many-colored woods, 
     Shade deepening over shade, the country round
     Imbrown; a crowded umbrage, dusk and dun, 
     Of every hue, from wan declining green 
     To sooty dark" : -

and in the line which he speaks of 

     "Autumn beaming o'er the yellow woods."

No one writes about seasons, weather, or fall, like Henry D. Thoreau.

This from his essay Autumnal Tints.

Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013. p. 281

Henry Thoreau’s subterranean fire

January 19th, 2024

This subterranean fire has its altar in each man’s breast, for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons.
Henry D. Thoreau

Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013.
Nature doesn’t pause, with Henry Thoreau

January 17th, 2024

The recent tracks of the fox or otter, in the yard, remind us that each hour of the night is crowded with events, and the primeval nature is still working and making tracks in the snow.
Henry D. Thoreau

Nature doesn’t pause. This is something we inherently know, but it takes a keen observer like Thoreau to call our attention to it.

Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013. pp28
Henry D. Thoreau and winter morning light

January 16th, 2024

Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift fall in, and step abroad to face the cutting air. Already the stars have lost some of their sparkle, and a dull leaden mist skirts the horizon. A lurid brazen light in the east proclaims the approach of day, while the western landscape is and spectral still, and clothed in a sombre Tartarrean light, like the shadowy realms.
– Henry D. Thoreau

That from Thoreau’s essay, a Winter Walk. The Tartarrean light refers to Tartarus, the lowest section of the underworld in Greek mythology.

Thoreau opens by opening his door and describing winter morning to us. Morning is a transition of light. Thoreau mentions light, in some form, three times in two sentences.

“Already the stars have lost some of their sparkle“

“A lurid brazen light in the east proclaims the approach of day“

“clothed in a sombre Tartarrean light“

Read A Winter Walk in full here.

Or pick up this helpful version Henry D. Thoreau Essays, full annotated edition from Yale press.

Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013. pp28