Complete Prose Works
marrow of the tragedy concentrated in those Army Hospitals--(it seem'd
sometimes as if the whole interest of the land, North and South, was
one vast central hospital, and all the rest of the affair but
flanges)--those forming the untold and unwritten history of the
war--infinitely greater (like life's) than the few scraps and
distortions that are ever told or written. Think how much, and
of importance, will be--how much, civic and military, has already
been--buried in the grave, in eternal darkness.
AN INTERREGNUM PARAGRAPH
Several years now elapse before I resume my diary. I continued at
Washington working in the Attorney-General's department through '66 and
'67, and some time afterward. In February '73 I was stricken down by
paralysis, gave up my desk, and migrated to Camden, New Jersey, where
I lived during '74 and '75, quite unwell--but after that began to grow
better; commenc'd going for weeks at a time, even for months, down in
the country, to a charmingly recluse and rural spot along Timber creek,
twelve or thirteen miles from where it enters the Delaware river.
Domicil'd at the farm-house of my friends, the Staffords, near by, I
lived half the time along this creek and its adjacent fields and lanes.
And it is to my life here that I, perhaps, owe partial recovery (a
sort of second wind, or semi-renewal of the lease of life) from the
prostration of 1874-'75. If the notes of that outdoor life could only
prove as glowing to you, reader dear, as the experience itself was to
me. Doubtless in the course of the following, the fact of invalidism
will crop out, (I call myself _a half-Paralytic_ these days, and
reverently bless the Lord it is no worse,) between some of the
lines--but I get my share of fun and healthy hours, and shall try to
indicate them. (The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low
down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the
skies.)
NEW THEMES ENTERED UPON
_1876, '77_.--I find the woods in mid-May and early June my best places
for composition.[9] Seated on logs or stumps there, or resting on rails,
nearly all the following memoranda have been jotted down. Wherever I go,
indeed, winter or summer, city or country, alone at home or traveling, I
must take notes--(the ruling passion strong in age and disablement, and
even the approach of--but I must not say it yet.) Then underneath the
following excerpta--crossing the _t's_ and dotting the _i's_ of certain
moderate movements of late years--I am fain to fancy the foundations
of quite a lesson learn'd. After you have exhausted what there is in
business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on--have found that none
of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear--what remains? Nature
remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of
a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of
seasons--the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night. We will begin
from these convictions. Literature flies so high and is so hotly spiced,
that our notes may seem hardly more than breaths of common air, or
draughts of water to drink. But that is part of our lesson.
Dear, soothing, healthy, restoration-hours--after three confining years
of paralysis--after the long strain of the war, and its wounds and
death.
Note:
[9] Without apology for the abrupt change of field and atmosphere--after
what I have put in the preceding fifty or sixty pages--temporary
episodes, thank heaven!--I restore my book to the bracing and buoyant
equilibrium of concrete outdoor Nature, the only permanent reliance for
sanity of book or human life.
Who knows, (I have it in my fancy, my ambition,) but the pages now
ensuing may carry ray of sun, or smell of grass or corn, or call of
bird, or gleam of stars by night, or snow-flakes falling fresh
and mystic, to denizen of heated city house, or tired workman or
workwoman?--or may-be in sick-room or prison--to serve as cooling
breeze, or Nature's aroma, to some fever'd mouth or latent pulse.
ENTERING A LONG FARM-LANE
As every man has his hobby-liking, mine is for a real farm-lane fenced
by old chestnut-rails gray-green with dabs of moss and lichen, copious
weeds and briers growing in spots athwart the heaps of stray-pick' d
stones at the fence bases--irregular paths worn between, and horse and
cow tracks--all characteristic accompaniments marking and scenting
the neighborhood in their seasons--apple-tree blossoms in forward
April--pigs, poultry, a field of August buckwheat, and in another the
long flapping tassels of maize--and so to the pond, the expansion of
the creek, the secluded-beautiful, with young and old trees, and such
recesses and vistas.
TO THE SPRING AND BROOK
So, still sauntering on, to the spring under the willows--musical as
soft clinking glasses-pouring a sizeable stream, thick as my neck, pure
and clear, out from its vent where the bank arches over like a
great brown shaggy eyebrow or mouth-roof--gurgling, gurgling
ceaselessly--meaning, saying something, of course (if one could only
translate it)--always gurgling there, the whole year through--never
giving out--oceans of mint, blackberries in summer--choice of light and
shade--just the place for my July sun-baths and water-baths too--but
mainly the inimitable soft sound-gurgles of it, as I sit there hot
afternoons. How they and all grow into me, day after day--everything in
keeping--the wild, just-palpable perfume, and the dappled leaf-shadows,
and all the natural-medicinal, elemental-moral influences of the spot.
Babble on, O brook, with that utterance of thine! I too will express
what I have gather'd in my days and progress, native, subterranean,
past--and now thee. Spin and wind thy way--I with thee, a little while,
at any rate. As I haunt thee so often, season by season, thou knowest,
reckest not me, (yet why be so certain? who can tell?)--but I will learn
from thee, and dwell on thee--receive, copy, print from thee.
AN EARLY SUMMER REVEILLE
Away then to loosen, to unstring the divine bow, so tense, so long.
Away, from curtain, carpet, sofa, book--from "society"--from city house,
street, and modern improvements and luxuries--away to the primitive
winding, aforementioned wooded creek, with its untrimm'd bushes and
turfy banks--away from ligatures, tight boots, buttons, and the whole
cast-iron civilized life--from entourage of artificial store, machine,
studio, office, parlor--from tailordom and fashion's clothes--from any
clothes, perhaps, for the nonce, the summer heats advancing, there in
those watery, shaded solitudes. Away, thou soul, (let me pick thee
out singly, reader dear, and talk in perfect freedom, negligently,
confidentially,) for one day and night at least, returning to the
naked source-life of us all--to the breast of the great silent savage
all-acceptive Mother. Alas! how many of us are so sodden--how many have
wander'd so far away, that return is almost impossible.
But to my jottings, taking them as they come, from the heap, without
particular selection. There is little consecutiveness in dates. They run
any time within nearly five or six years. Each was carelessly pencilled
in the open air, at the time and place. The printers will learn this
to some vexation perhaps, as much of their copy is from those
hastily-written first notes.
BIRDS MIGRATING AT MIDNIGHT
Did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of birds passing through
the air and darkness overhead, in countless armies, changing their early
or late summer habitat? It is something not to be forgotten. A friend
called me up just after 12 last night to mark the peculiar noise of
unusually immense flocks migrating north (rather late this year.) In
the silence, shadow and delicious odor of the hour, (the natural perfume
belonging to the night alone,) I thought it rare music. You could _hear_
the characteristic motion--once or twice "the rush of mighty wings,"
but often a velvety rustle, long drawn out--sometimes quite near--with
continual calls and chirps, and some song-notes. It all lasted from 12
till after 3. Once in a while the species was plainly distinguishable;
I could make out the bobolink, tanager, Wilson's thrush, white-crown'd
sparrow, and occasionally from high in the air came the notes of the
plover.
BUMBLE-BEES
May-month--month of swarming, singing, mating birds--the bumble-bee
month--month of the flowering lilac-(and then my own birth-month.) As
I jot this paragraph, I am out just after sunrise, and down towards the
creek. The lights, perfumes, melodies--the blue birds, grass birds
and robins, in every direction--the noisy, vocal, natural concert. For
undertones, a neighboring wood-pecker tapping his tree, and the distant
clarion of chanticleer. Then the fresh-earth smells--the colors, the
delicate drabs and thin blues of the perspective. The bright green of
the grass has receiv'd an added tinge from the last two days' mildness
and moisture. How the sun silently mounts in the broad clear sky, on
his day's journey! How the warm beams bathe all, and come streaming
kissingly and almost hot on my face.
A while since the croaking of the pond-frogs and the first white of
the dog-wood blossoms. Now the golden dandelions in endless profusion,
spotting the ground everywhere. The white cherry and pear-blows--the
wild violets, with their blue eyes looking up and saluting my feet, as
I saunter the wood-edge--the rosy blush of budding apple-trees--the
light-clear emerald hue of the wheat-fields--the darker green of the
rye--a warm elasticity pervading the air--the cedar-bushes profusely
deck'd with their little brown apples--the summer fully awakening--the
convocation of black birds, garrulous flocks of them, gathering on some
tree, and making the hour and place noisy as I sit near.
_Later._--Nature marches in procession, in sections, like the corps of
an army. All have done much for me, and still do. But for the last two
days it has been the great wild bee, the humble-bee, or "bumble," as the
children call him. As I walk, or hobble, from the farm-house down to the
creek, I traverse the before-mention'd lane, fenced by old rails, with
many splits, splinters, breaks, holes, &c., the choice habitat of those
crooning, hairy insects. Up and down and by and between these rails,
they swarm and dart and fly in countless myriads. As I wend slowly
along, I am often accompanied with a moving cloud of them. They play a
leading part in my morning, midday or sunset rambles, and often dominate
the landscape in a way I never before thought of--fill the long lane,
not by scores or hundreds only, but by thousands. Large and vivacious
and swift, with wonderful momentum and a loud swelling, perpetual hum,
varied now and then by something almost like a shriek, they dart to and
fro, in rapid flashes, chasing each other, and (little things as they
are,) conveying to me a new and pronounc'd sense of strength, beauty,
vitality and movement. Are they in their mating season? or what is the
meaning of this plenitude, swiftness, eagerness, display? As I walk'd, I
thought I was follow'd by a particular swarm, but upon observation I saw
that it was a rapid succession of changing swarms, one after another.
As I write, I am seated under a big wild-cherry tree--the warm day
temper'd by partial clouds and a fresh breeze, neither too heavy nor
light--and here I sit long and long, envelop'd in the deep musical
drone of these bees, flitting, balancing, darting to and fro about me
by hundreds--big fellows with light yellow jackets, great glistening
swelling bodies, stumpy heads and gauzy wings--humming their perpetual
rich mellow boom. (Is there not a hint in it for a musical composition,
of which it should be the back-ground? some bumble-bee symphony?) How