9.19.2006
Thoreau's Journal: 19-Sep-1854
Thinking this afternoon of the prospect of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter. I realized how incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed so long (and may still perhaps enjoy). I thought with what more than princely, with what poetical, leisure I had spent my years hitherto, without care or engagement, fancy-free. I have given myself up to nature; I have lived so many springs and summers and autumns and winters as if I had nothing else to do but live them, and imbibe whatever nutriment they had for me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers chiefly, having none other so binding engagement as to observe when they opened; I could have afforded to spend a whole fall observing the changing tints of the foliage. Ah, how I have thriven on solitude and poverty! I cannot overstate this advantage. I do not see how I could have enjoyed it, if the public had been expecting as much of me as there is danger now that they will. If I go abroad lecturing, how shall I ever recover the lost winter?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Thank you for doing this. I discovered this blog a couple of weeks ago, and I've been making a practice of reading the entry each morning as I sit down in my cubicle at the office. The work is all-too-often a little soulless, but a dose of Thoreau is kind of like a glimpse toward the horizon or the farther shore. There is hope in it, and I'm grateful for it.
i think this blog was crested for folk just like you. so pleased it could be your binoculars toward the other shore. keep the faith.
Post a Comment