Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/300

268 the reader's memory. He complained because the modern botanist measured plants instead of describing them, according to the mode of Gerard and the earlier naturalists. In observations, and in descriptions alike, he was ever more poet than scientist. The plain sorrel seemed to his imagination like "blood mantling in the cheek of the beautiful year," the common stubble in winter became glorified and visualized by the amber sunset light, the glitter and joy of the river bursting through the ice symbolized the soul rejoicing in its future. All nature's movements seemed to him the song of love;—"The song of the birds is an epithalamium, a hymeneal. The marriage of the flowers spots the meadows and fringes the hedges with pearls and diamonds. In the deep water, in the high air, in woods and pastures, and the bowels of the earth, this is the employment and condition of all things."

In observation, Thoreau's methods were those of a romancer with nature, her poet-lover. He would sit quietly for hours on a tree-trunk until the birds would come and join him; he would float idly in his boat, and the fishes would nibble at his fingers or even rest on the palm of his hand. His loftiest aim was to "live as tenderly and gently as one would pluck a flower." He preserved hundreds of specimens but he was always cautious to avoid any