Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/308

294. The winter, cold and bound out, as it is, is thrown to us like a bone to a famishing dog, and we are expected to get the marrow out of it. While the milkmen in the outskirts are milking so many scores of cows before sunrise these winter mornings, it is our task to milk the winter itself. It is true it is like a cow that is dry, and our fingers are numb, and there is none to wake us up. Some desert the fields, and go into winter quarters in the city. They attend the oratorios, while the only music we countrymen hear is the squeaking of the snow under our boots. But the winter was not given us for no purpose. We must thaw its cold with our genialness. We are tasked to find out and appropriate all the nutriment it yields. If it is a cold and hard season, its fruit no doubt is the more concentrated and nutty. It took the cold and bleakness of November to ripen the walnut, but the human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. Not till then does its shell come off. Because the fruits of the earth are already ripe, we are not to suppose there is no fruit left for winter to ripen. Then is the great harvest of the year, the harvest of thought. All previous harvests are stubble to this, mere fodder and green crop. Our oil is winter-strained. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars.—Shall we take refuge in cities in November?