Identifier: throughyearwitht00thor (find matches)
Title: Through the year with Thoreau
Year: 1917 (1910s)
Authors: Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862 Gleason, Herbert Wendell, 1855-1937
Subjects: Natural history. (from old catalog)
Publisher: Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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is irregular period, whenother shrubs have lost their leaves, as well as blos-soms, looks like witches craft. Certainly it bloomsin no garden of mans. Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 379. October 9, 1851. To Conantum. The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside,while its broad yellow leaves are falling. It is an ex-tremely interesting plant, — October and Novem-bers child, and yet reminds me of the very earliestspring. Its blossoms smell like the spring, like thewillow catkins; by their color as well as fragrance theybelong to the saffron dawn of the year, suggestingamid all these signs of autumn, falling leaves andfrost, that the life of Nature, by which she eternallyflourishes, is untouched. It stands here in theshadow on the side of the hill, while the sunlight fromover the top of the hill lights up its topmost spraysand yellow blossoms. Its spray, so jointed and an-gular, is not to be mistaken for any other. I lieon my back with joy under its boughs. While its
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C 91 ) leaves fall, its blossoms spring. The autumn, then,is indeed a spring. All the year is a spring. I see twoblackbirds high overhead, going south, but I amgoing north in my thought with these hazel blossoms.It is a faery place. This is a part of the immortalityof the soul. Journal, in, 59, 60. ( 92 ) OCTOBER REFLECTIONS ON THEASSABET October 17, 1858. Up Assabet. Methinks thereflections are never purer and more distinct thannow at the season of the fall of the leaf, just beforethe cool twilight has come, when the air has a finergrain. Just as our mental reflections are more dis-tinct at this season of the year, when the eveningsgrow cool and lengthen and our winter eveningswith their brighter fires may be said to begin. One reason why I associate perfect reflections fromstill water with this and a later season may be thatnow, by the fall of the leaves, so much more lightis let in to the water. The river reflects more light,therefore, in this twilight of the year, as it were anaft

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