Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/295

Rh well-trained they might be. With delight at finding the first specimen of ledum latifolium, with its dark, red-purplish leaves, he confesses;—"As usual with the finding of new plants, I had a presentiment that I should find the ledum in Concord. It is a remarkable fact that in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery." (Journal, February 4, 1858.) Such experiences may be the common result of acute intuition, combined with rare concentration of interest and observation, yet they evidence none the less this marvelous insight and responsiveness which he had for nature-secrets. To him, as high-priest, the "inner secret of the universe" seemed about to unfold. Fully conscious of this transcendental insight, he wrote,—"The seasons and all their changes are in me." In winter he found a new annual pleasure in the glaze and leaf crystals, the purple vapor and indigo shadows, the walks over frozen rivers and marshes; again, with a poet's rapture, he welcomed the first signs of spring, in the delicate coloring of earth, the clear, oozing sap from the maples and the tortoise moving in the ditches. Then could he proclaim,—"Here is my Italy, my heaven, my New England."

Essentially a scholar and an author as he was,