Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/186

172 bill into them, or some silk from those cocoons I saw this morning.&quot;

Jan. 13, 1857. I hear one thrumming a guitar below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I have lived. What a comment on our life is the least strain of music! It lifts me above all the dust and mire of the universe. I soar or hover with clean skirts over the field of my life. It is ever life within life in concentric spheres. The field wherein I toil or rust at any time is at the same time the field for such different kinds of life! The farmer's boy or hired man has an instinct which tells him as much indistinctly; hence his dreams and his restlessness, hence even it is that he wants money to realize his dream with. The identical field where I am leading my humdrum life, let but a strain of music be heard there, is seen to be the field of some unrecorded crusade or tournament, the thought of which excites in us an ecstasy of joy. The way in which I am affected by this faint thrumming advertises me that there is still some health and immortality in the springs of me. What an elixir is this sound! I who but lately came and went and lived under—a dish cover—live now under the heavens. It releases me, bursts my bonds. Almost all, perhaps all, our life is, speaking comparatively, a stereo typed despair, i. e., we never at any time realize