Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/199

Rh deciduous trees are apparently dead and the white pine is much darker, but the pitch pine has an ingrained sunniness and is especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season. Yet men will take pains to cut down these trees, and set imported larches in their places! The pitch pine shines in the spring somewhat as the osiers do.

March 20, 1840. In society all the inspiration of my lonely hours seems to flow back on me, and then first to have expression.

Love never degrades its votaries, but lifts them up to higher walks of being; they overlook one another. All other charities are swallowed up in this. It is gift and reward both. We will have no vulgar cupid for a go-between, to make us the playthings of each other, but rather cultivate an irreconcilable hatred instead of this.

March 20, 1841. Even the wisest and best are apt to use their lives as the occasion to do something else in than to live greatly. But we should hang as fondly over this work as the finishing and embellishment of a poem.

It is a great relief when for a few moments in the day we can retire to our chamber and be completely true to ourselves. It leavens the rest of our hours. In that moment I will be nakedly as vicious as I am; this false life of mine shall have a being at length.