Nature's DiaryHoughton, Mifflin, 1897 - 378 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
18 THOREAU 9 ΙΟ amid Autumnal Tints bark beauty birds blackbirds blossoms blue bluebird bobolink boughs bright brown Brown Thrasher buds buntings BURROUGHS bush catkins chickadee Chimney Swift color comes Concord and Merrimack cool crow dark downy woodpecker Early Spring edge feet fields flitting flock flowers flying foot Fox Sparrow Goldenrod graceful grass green ground half head hear heard hills hillside leaf leaves light lily Lingering Snow look maple meadow Merrimack Rivers Nature's Diary night Palm Warbler partridge Pepacton perhaps pine Pipsissewa pitch pine pond purple ripen river Riverby robin Ruby-crowned Kinglet season seen shore shrub oak side singing snow buntings sound sparrow Spring in Massachusetts squirrel stem stream Summer sunset swamp sweet thrush TORREY trees twigs twitter Walden walk Warbler warm whip-poor-will willow wind wings Winter Sunshine witch-hazel wood thrush woods Yellow
Popular passages
Page 29 - Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake or tree or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he For number or proportion.
Page 19 - In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay ; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Page 21 - Hang motionless upon their upright staves. The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, Wing-weary with its long flight from the south, Unfelt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, 10 Confesses it.
Page 9 - Happy to meet you in these places, Where January brings few faces. " This poet, though he live apart, Moved by his hospitable heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land ; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play Head downward, clinging to the spray. Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance...
Page 3 - BURLY, dozing humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek; I will follow thee alone, Thou animated torrid zone! Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let me chase thy waving lines; Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs and vines. Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion! Sailor of the atmosphere...
Page 3 - This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rainstorm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the woodthrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore.
Page 7 - Nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year. Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here ; Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings, Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, Runs down, a brook o
Page 23 - The sumach (Rhus glabra) grew luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the embankment which I had made, and growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into graceful green and tender boughs...
Page 11 - Seldom seen by wishful eyes, But all her shows did Nature yield, To please and win this pilgrim wise. He saw the partridge drum in the woods ; He heard the woodcock's evening hymn ; He found the tawny thrushes...
Page 27 - Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, Their nooning take, while one begins to sing A stave that droops and dies 'neath the close sky of brass. Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink, Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops...