Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/120

 winter with their seeds entertain the earliest birds.

We are obliged to respect that custom which stamps the loaf of bread with the sheaf of wheat and the sickle. Men have come at length, after so many centuries, to regard these gifts properly. The gift of bread even to the poor is perhaps better received than any other! more religiously given and taken, and is not liable to be a stone. The manner in which men consider husbandry is marked, and worthy of the race. They have slowly learned thus much. Let the despairing race of men know that there is in Nature no sign of decay, but universal uninterrupted vigor. All waste and ruin has a speedy period. Who ever detected a wrinkle on her brow, or a weather seam, or a gray hair on her crown, or a rent in her garment? No one sees Nature who sees her not as young and fresh, without history. We may have such intercourse with her to-day, as we imagine to constitute the employment of gods. We live here to have intercourse with rivers, forests, mountains,—beasts and men. How few do we see conversing with these things! [72]