Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/211

Rh only some degrees poorer than nature. It is impossible to have more property than we dispense. Genius is only as rich as it is generous. If it hoards, it impoverishes itself. What the banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have, leisure and a quiet mind.

Jan. 18, 1852. I still remember those wonderful sparkles at Pelham Pond. The very sportsmen in the distance with their dogs and guns presented some surfaces on which a sparkle could impinge, such was the transparent, flashing air. It was a most exhilarating, intoxicating air, as when poets sing of the sparkling wine.

What is like the peep or whistle of a bird in the midst of a winter storm?

The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.

Jan. 18, 1856.  To Walden, to learn the temperature of the water. This is a very mild, melting winter day, but clear and bright. Yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. The snow lies very level there, about ten inches deep, and, for the most part, bears me as I go across with my hatchet. I think I never saw a more elysian blue than my shadow. I am turned into a tall blue Persian from my cap to my boots, such as no mortal dye can produce, with an amethystine hatchet in my hand. I am in raptures with my own shadow. Our