Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/355

Rh Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and time itself run down.

Feb. 5, 1853. The frost is out of the ground in many places. A stellaria media [common chickweed] in blossom in the garden, as was the case, of course, last month.

Feb. 5, 1854. Shall we not have sympathy with the muskrat, which gnaws its third leg off, not as pitying its suffering, but, through our kindred mortality, appreciating its majestic pains and its heroic virtue? Are we not made its brothers by fate? For whom are psalms sung and mass said, if not for such worthies as these? When I hear the church organ peal, or feel the trembling tones of the bass-viol, I see in imagination the muskrat gnawing off his leg. I offer up a note that his affliction may be sanctified to each and all of us. When I think of the tragedies which are constantly permitted in the course of all animal life, they make the plaintive strain of the universal harp which elevates us above the trivial. Even as the worthies of mankind are said to recommend human life by having lived it, so I could not spare the example of the muskrat.

Feb. 5, 1859. When we have experienced