Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/277

Rh mouthing and licking them into lumpish shapes, as the bear treats her cubs, words like tribal and ornamentation which drag a dead tail after them. They will pick you out of a thousand the still-born words, the falsettoes, the wing-clipt and lame words, as if only the false notes caught their ears. They cry encore to all the discords. The cocks crow in the yard, and the hens cackle and scratch all this winter. Eggs must be plenty.

Jan. 1840. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill as to embrace the complete idea of poetry even in thought, The best book is only an advertisement of it, such as is sometimes sewed in with its cover. It has a logic more severe than the logician's.

Jan. 27, 1840. What a tame life we are living! How little heroic it is! Let us devise never so perfect a system of living, and straight way the soul leaves it to shuffle along its own way alone. It is easy enough to establish a durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all parts of nature consent to it. The sun-dial still points to the noon mark, and the sun rises and sets for it. The neighbors are never fatally obstinate when such a scheme is to be instituted, but forthwith all lend a hand, ring the bell, bring fuel and lights, put by work, and don their