Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/150

126 He became, however, far more of a poet and romanticist in his attitude towards nature during his lake-encampment. His substitute pleasure for angling was reverie in his boat on warm evenings, "playing the flute, and watching the perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon traveling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest."

This Walden experiment had potent influence in informing and educing the naturalist, both in scientific and poetic qualities. As he had anticipated, so he gained that intimate and wide knowledge of nature as is only revealed to one who lives in familiar communion with her through the varying changes of two complete seasons. One of his acknowledged purposes was to note the actual awakening of spring in the subtle, secretive phases of soil, woodland, sap, and insect. Eagerly he saw and compared the primal signs of release from hibernation of all vegetable and animal life; with exultant thrill he heard the first note of bird, the earliest buzz of bee, and the faintest chirp of the frog. In truth, as one traces the services of Thoreau as naturalist, he realizes that the first true revelation came to him in this very heart of nature, able to count her pulse-beats, free from the sordid distractions and cares of outside life.