Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/246

232 me. Orpheus is still alive. All poetry and mythology revive. The spirits of all bards sweep the strings. I hear the clearest silver lyre-like tones, Tyrtæan tones. It is the most glorious music I ever heard. All those bards revive and flourish again in those five minutes in the Deep Cut. The breeze came through an oak still waving its dry leaves. The very fine, clear tones seemed to come from the very core and pith of the telegraph pole. I know not but it is my own chords that tremble so divinely. There are barytones and high, sharp tones, and some come sweeping seemingly from farther along the wire. The latent music of the earth had found here a vent, music Æolian. There were two strings in fact, one each side. Thus, as ever, the finest uses of things are the accidental. Mr. Morse did not invent this music.

There are some whose ears help me so that my things have a rare significance when I read to them. It is almost too good a hearing, so that, for the time, I regard my own writing from too favorable a point of view.

Jan. 23, 1854. Love tends to purify and sublime itself. It mortifies and triumphs over the flesh, and the bond of its union is holiness.

The increased length of the days is very observable of late. What is a winter unless