Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/220

206 friends, and still ever seek for ourselves in that which is above us and unlike us. So only shall we see what has been well called the light of our own countenances.

Jan. 20, 1853. Ah, our indescribable winter sky, between emerald (?) and amber (?), such as summer never sees. What more beautiful or soothing to the eye than those finely divided clouds, like down or loose-spread cotton batting, now reaching up from the west above my head! Beneath this a different stratum, all whose ends are curved like spray or wisps. All kinds of figures are drawn on the blue ground with this fibrous white paint.

Jan. 20, 1855. In certain places, standing on their snowiest side, the woods were incredibly fair, white as alabaster. Indeed, the young pines reminded you of the purest statuary, and the stately, full-grown ones, towering around, affected you as if you stood in a Titanic sculptor's studio, so purely and delicately white, transmitting the light, their dark trunks all concealed; and in many places where the snow lay on withered oak leaves between you and the light, various delicate, fawn-colored tints blending with the white enhanced the beauty.

How new all things seem! Here is a broad, shallow pool in the fields which yesterday was slush, now converted into a soft, white,