Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/323

Rh oppressed by the snow, cold, wind, etc. The transition from these flattened firs and spruces to shrubless rocks is not nearly so abrupt as from upright or slender trees to these dwarfed thickets.

July 3, 1840. When Alexander appears, the Hercynian and Dodonean woods seem to wave a welcome to him. Do not thoughts and men's lives enrich the earth and change the aspect of things as much as a new growth of wood?

What are Godfrey and Gonsalve unless we breathe a life into them, and reenact their exploits as a prelude to our own? The past is only so heroic as we see it; it is the canvas on which our conception of heroism is painted, the dim prospectus of our future field. We are dreaming of what we are to do.

The last sunrise I witnessed seemed to outshine the splendor of all preceding ones, and I was convinced it behoved man to dawn as freshly, and with equal promise and steadiness advance into the career of life, with as lofty and serene a countenance to move onward, through his midday, to a yet fairer and more promising setting. Has the day grown old when it sets? and shall man wear out sooner than the sun? In the crimson colors of the west I discern the budding lines of dawn. To my western brother it is rising pure and bright as it did to me, but