Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/393

Rh The consciousness of man is the consciousness of God, the end of the world.

The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often succumbs, and goes into a decline.

Feb. 13, 1841. By the truthfulness of our story to-day, we help explain ourselves for all our life henceforth. How we hamper and belay ourselves by the least exaggeration. The truth is God's concern; he will sustain it. But who can afford to maintain a lie? We have taken away one of the pillars of Hercules, and must support the world on our shoulders, who might have walked freely upon it.

Feb. 13, 1851. Skated to Sudbury. A beautiful summer-like day. The meadows were frozen just enough to bear. Examined now the fleets of ice flakes close at hand. They are a very singular and interesting phenomenon which I do not remember to have seen. I should say that when the water was frozen about as thick as pasteboard, a violent gust had here and there broken it up, and while the wind and waves held it on its edge, the increasing cold froze it in firmly. So it seemed, for the flakes were, for the most part, turned one way, i. e., standing on one side, you saw only their edges, on another, the N. E. or S. W., their sides. They were