Complete Prose Works
system, once thoroughly started, made rapid progress, there was still
great vitality in him, and indeed for four or five days he lay
dying, before the close,) late on Wednesday night, Nov. 4th, where we
surrounded his bed in silence, there came a lull--a longer drawn breath,
a pause, a faint sigh--another--a weaker breath, another sigh--a pause
again and just a tremble--and the face of the poor wasted young man (he
was just 26,) fell gently over, in death, on my hand, on the pillow.
CHARLES CASWELL.--[I extract the following, verbatim, from a letter
to me dated September 29, from my friend John Burroughs, at
Esopus-on-Hudson, New York State.] S. was away when your picture came,
attending his sick brother, Charles--who has since died--an event that
has sadden'd me much. Charlie was younger than S., and a most attractive
young fellow. He work'd at my father's and had done so for two years.
He was about the best specimen of a young country farm-hand I ever knew.
You would have loved him. He was like one of your poems. With his
great strength, his blond hair, his cheerfulness and contentment, his
universal good will, and his silent manly ways, he was a youth hard to
match. He was murder'd by an old doctor. He had typhoid fever, and the
old fool bled him twice. He lived to wear out the fever, but had not
strength to rally. He was out of his head nearly all the time. In the
morning, as he died in the afternoon, S. was standing over him, when
Charlie put up his arms around S.'s neck, and pull'd his face down and
kiss'd him. S. said he knew then the end was near. (S. stuck to him day
and night to the last.) When I was home in August, Charlie was cradling
on the hill, and it was a picture to see him walk through the grain. All
work seem'd play to him. He had no vices, any more than Nature has, and
was belov'd by all who knew him.
I have written thus to you about him, for such young men belong to
you; he was of your kind. I wish you could have known him. He had the
sweetness of a child, and the strength and courage and readiness of a
young Viking. His mother and father are poor; they have a rough, hard
farm. His mother works in the field with her husband when the work
presses. She has had twelve children.
FEBRUARY DAYS
_February 7, 1878_.--Glistening sun today, with slight haze, warm
enough, and yet tart, as I sit here in the open air, down in my country
retreat, under an old cedar. For two hours I have been idly wandering
around the woods and pond, lugging my chair, picking out choice spots to
sit awhile--then up and slowly on again. All is peace here. Of course,
none of the summer noises or vitality; to-day hardly even the winter
ones. I amuse myself by exercising my voice in recitations, and in
ringing the changes on all the vocal and alphabetical sounds. Not even
an echo; only the cawing of a solitary crow, flying at some distance.
The pond is one bright, flat spread, without a ripple--a vast Claude
Lorraine glass, in which I study the sky, the light, the leafless trees,
and an occasional crow, with flapping wings, flying overhead. The brown
fields have a few white patches of snow left.
_Feb. 9_.--After an hour's ramble, now retreating, resting, sitting
close by the pond, in a warm nook, writing this, shelter'd from the
breeze, just before noon. The _emotional_ aspects and influences of
Nature! I, too, like the rest, feel these modern tendencies (from all
the prevailing intellections, literature and poems,) to turn everything
to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfaction, death. Yet how clear it is
to me that those are not the born results, influences of Nature at all,
but of one's own distorted, sick or silly soul. Here, amid this wild,
free scene, how healthy, how joyous, how clean and vigorous and sweet!
_Mid-afternoon_.--One of my nooks is south of the barn, and here I am
sitting now, on a log, still basking in the sun, shielded from the wind.
Near me are the cattle, feeding on corn-stalks. Occasionally a cow or
the young bull (how handsome and bold he is!) scratches and munches
the far end of the log on which I sit. The fresh milky odor is quite
perceptible, also the perfume of hay from the barn. The perpetual rustle
of dry corn-stalks, the low sough of the wind round the barn gables, the
grunting of pigs, the distant whistle of a locomotive, and occasional
crowing of chanticleers, are the sounds.
_Feb. 19._--Cold and sharp last night--clear and not much wind--the full
moon shining, and a fine spread of constellations and little and big
stars--Sirius very bright, rising early, preceded by many-orb'd Orion,
glittering, vast, sworded, and chasing with his dog. The earth hard
frozen, and a stiff glare of ice over the pond. Attracted by the calm
splendor of the night, I attempted a short walk, but was driven back
by the cold. Too severe for me also at 9 o'clock, when I came out this
morning, so I turn'd back again. But now, near noon, I have walk'd
down the lane, basking all the way in the sun (this farm has a pleasant
southerly exposure,) and here I am, seated under the lee of a bank,
close by the water. There are bluebirds already flying about, and I
hear much chirping and twittering and two or three real songs, sustain'd
quite awhile, in the mid-day brilliance and warmth. (There! that is a
true carol, coming out boldly and repeatedly, as if the singer meant
it.) Then as the noon strengthens, the reedy trill of the robin--to my
ear the most cheering of bird-notes. At intervals, like bars and breaks
(out of the low murmur that in any scene, however quiet, is never
entirely absent to a delicate ear,) the occasional crunch and cracking
of the ice-glare congeal'd over the creek, as it gives way to the
sunbeams--sometimes with low sigh--sometimes with indignant, obstinate
tug and snort.
(Robert Burns says in one of his letters: "There is scarcely any earthly
object gives me more--I do not know if I should call it pleasure--but
something which exalts me--something which enraptures me--than to walk
in the shelter' d side of a wood in a cloudy winter day, and hear the
stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving over the plain. It is
my best season of devotion." Some of his most characteristic poems were
composed in such scenes and seasons.)
A MEADOW LARK
_March 16_.--Fine, clear, dazzling morning, the sun an hour high, the
air just tart enough. What a stamp in advance my whole day receives
from the song of that meadow lark perch'd on a fence-stake twenty rods
distant! Two or three liquid-simple notes, repeated at intervals,
full of careless happiness and hope. With its peculiar shimmering slow
progress and rapid-noiseless action of the wings, it flies on a way,
lights on another stake, and so on to another, shimmering and singing
many minutes.
SUNDOWN LIGHTS
_May 6, 5 P. M._--This is the hour for strange effects in light and
shade-enough to make a colorist go delirious--long spokes of molten
silver sent horizontally through the trees (now in their brightest
tenderest green,) each leaf and branch of endless foliage a lit-up
miracle, then lying all prone on the youthful-ripe, interminable grass,
and giving the blades not only aggregate but individual splendor, in
ways unknown to any other hour. I have particular spots where I get
these effects in their perfection. One broad splash lies on the
water, with many a rippling twinkle, offset by the rapidly deepening
black-green murky-transparent shadows behind, and at intervals all along
the banks. These, with great shafts of horizontal fire thrown among the
trees and along the grass as the sun lowers, give effects more and more
peculiar, more and more superb, unearthly, rich and dazzling.
THOUGHTS UNDER AN OAK--A DREAM
_June 2_.--This is the fourth day of a dark northeast storm, wind and
rain. Day before yesterday was my birthday. I have now enter'd on
my 60th year. Every day of the storm, protected by overshoes and a
waterproof blanket, I regularly come down to the pond, and ensconce
myself under the lee of the great oak; I am here now writing these
lines. The dark smoke-color'd clouds roll in furious silence athwart the
sky; the soft green leaves dangle all around me; the wind steadily keeps
up its hoarse, soothing music over my head--Nature's mighty whisper.
Seated here in solitude I have been musing over my life--connecting
events, dates, as links of a chain, neither sadly nor cheerily, but
somehow, to-day here under the oak, in the rain, in an unusually
matter-of-fact spirit.
But my great oak--sturdy, vital, green-five feet thick at the butt. I
sit a great deal near or under him. Then the tulip tree near by--the
Apollo of the woods--tall and graceful, yet robust and sinewy,
inimitable in hang of foliage and throwing-out of limb; as if the
beauteous, vital, leafy creature could walk, if it only would. (I had
a sort of dream-trance the other day, in which I saw my favorite trees
step out and promenade up, down and around, very curiously--with a
whisper from one, leaning down as he pass'd me, _We do all this on the
present occasion, exceptionally, just for you_.)
CLOVER AND HAY PERFUME
_July 3d, 4th, 5th._--Clear, hot, favorable weather--has been a good
summer--the growth of clover and grass now generally mow'd. The familiar
delicious perfume fills the barns and lanes. As you go along you see the
fields of grayish white slightly tinged with yellow, the loosely stack'd
grain, the slow-moving wagons passing, and farmers in the fields with
stout boys pitching and loading the sheaves. The corn is about beginning
to tassel. All over the middle and southern states the spear-shaped
battalia, multitudinous, curving, flaunting--long, glossy, dark-green
plumes for the great horseman, earth. I hear the cheery notes of my old
acquaintance Tommy quail; but too late for the whip-poor-will, (though
I heard one solitary lingerer night before last.) I watch the broad
majestic flight of a turkey-buzzard, sometimes high up, sometimes low
enough to see the lines of his form, even his spread quills, in relief
against the sky. Once or twice lately I have seen an eagle here at early
candle-light flying low.
AN UNKNOWN
_June 15_.--To-day I noticed a new large bird, size of a nearly grown
hen--a haughty, white-bodied dark-wing'd hawk--I suppose a hawk from his
bill and general look--only he had a clear, loud, quite musical, sort of
bell-like call, which he repeated again and again, at intervals, from a
lofty dead tree-top, overhanging the water. Sat there a long time, and I
on the opposite bank watching him. Then he darted down, skimming pretty
close to the stream--rose slowly, a magnificent sight, and sail'd with
steady wide-spread wings, no flapping at all, up and down the pond
two or three times, near me, in circles in clear sight, as if for my
delectation. Once he came quite close over my head; I saw plainly his
hook'd bill and hard restless eyes.
BIRD-WHISTLING
How much music (wild, simple, savage, doubtless, but so tart-sweet,)
there is in mere whistling. It is four-fifths of the utterance of birds.
There are all sorts and styles. For the last half-hour, now, while I
have been sitting here, some feather'd fellow away off in the bushes has
been repeating over and over again what I may call a kind of throbbing
whistle. And now a bird about the robin size has just appear'd, all
mulberry red, flitting among the bushes--head, wings, body, deep red,
not very bright--no song, as I have heard. _4. o'clock_: There is a real
concert going on around me--a dozen different birds pitching in with
a will. There have been occasional rains, and the growths all show its
vivifying influences. As I finish this, seated on a log close by the
pond-edge, much chirping and trilling in the distance, and a feather'd