Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/269

Rh dark mass, but against the sky it has parts, has symmetry and expansion. The thousand fine points and tops of the trees delight me. They are the plumes and standards and bayonets of a host that march to victory over the earth. The trees are handsome toward the heavens, as well as up their boles. They are good for other things than boards and shingles.

Obey the spur of the moment. These accumulated it is that make the impulse and the impetus of the life of genius. These are the spongioles and rootlets by which its trunk is fed. If you neglect the moments, if you cut off your fibrous roots, what but a languishing life is to be expected. Let the spurs of countless moments goad us incessantly into life. I feel the spur of the moment thrust deep into my side. The present is an inexorable rider. The moment always spurs either with a sharp or a blunt spur. Are my sides calloused? Let us trust the rider that he knows the way, that he knows when speed and effort are required. What other impulse do we wait for?

Let us preserve religiously, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature. Else what are heat and cold, day and night, sun, moon, and stars to us? Was it not from sympathy with the present life of nature that we were born at this epoch rather than at