Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/216

134 behind his age. His yea has reserved no nay for the morrow.

The wisest solution is no better than dissolution. Already the seer whispers his convictions to bare walls ; no audience in the land can attend to them.

An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. To my neighbors who have risen in mist and rain I tell of a clear sunrise and the singing of birds as some traditionary mythus. I look back to those fresh but now remote hours as to the old dawn of time, when a solid and blooming health reigned and every deed was simple and heroic.

April 22. Thales was the first of the Greeks who taught that souls are immortal, and it takes equal wisdom to discern this old fact to-day. What the first philosopher taught, the last will have to repeat. The world makes no progress.

I cannot turn on my heel in a carpeted room. What a gap in the morning is a breakfast! A supper super sedes the sunset. Methinks I hear the ranz des vaches and shall soon be tempted to desert. Will not one thick garment suffice for three thin ones ? Then I shall be less compound, and can lay my hand on myself in the dark. May 14. A kind act or gift lays us under obligation not so much to the giver as to Truth and Love. We