Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/141

Rh beneath are much larger, but a subdued, satiny white. Even a bird's wing has an upper and an under side, and the last admits only of more subdued and tender colors.

Jan. 7, 1851. The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens, and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.

I felt my spirits rise when I had got out of the road into the open fields, and the sky had a new appearance. I stepped along more buoyantly. There was a warm sunset in the wooded valleys, a yellowish tinge on the pines. Reddish dun-colored clouds, like dusky flames, stood over it, and then streaks of blue sky were seen here and there. The life, the joy that is in blue sky after a storm. There is no account of the blue sky in history. Before, I walked in the ruts of travel, now I adventured.

If I have any conversation with a scamp in my walk, my afternoon is wont to be spoiled.

Jan. 7, 1852. Now  I see the sun descending into the west. There is something new, a snow bow in the east, on the snow clouds, merely a white bow, hardly any color