Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/231

Rh happen that the stars are more significant and truly celestial to the teamster than to the astronomer. Children study astronomy at the district school, and learn that the sun is ninety-five millions of miles distant and the like, a statement which never made any impression on me, because I never walked it, and which I can not be said to believe. But the sun shines nevertheless. Though observatories are multiplied, the heavens receive very little attention. The naked eye may easily see farther than the armed. It depends on who looks through it. Man's eye is the true star-finder, the comet-seeker. No superior telescope to this has been invented. In those big ones, the recoil is equal to the force of the discharge. &quot;The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling&quot; ranges from earth to heaven, which the astronomer's eye not often does. It does not see far beyond the dome of the observatory.

As I walk the railroad causeway, I am disturbed by the sound of my steps on the frozen ground. I wish to hear the silence of the night. I cannot walk with my ears covered, for the silence is something positive and to be heard. I must stand still and listen with open ear, far from the noises of the village, that the night may make its impression on me, a fertile and eloquent silence. Sometimes the silence is