The Blog of Henry David Thoreau: sappy vigor...Thoreau's Journal: 25-Apr-1857

4.25.2014

sappy vigor
...Thoreau's Journal: 25-Apr-1857

Suppose we were to drink only the yellow birch sap and mix its bark with our bread, would not its yellow curls sprout from our foreheads, and our breath and persons exhale its sweet aroma? What sappy vigor there would be in our limbs! What sense we should have to explore the swamps with!

1 comment:

michael jameson said...: man has tried many things to become as close to nature as possible,why?, perhaps for some purification or once again to gain an extra sense or gain some ultimate knowledge, some just dont like people and how they treat each other!,but we are part of nature as a tree to the earth, does the tree wish to be a robin or a human? i think not,all else is happy to be as it is. michael jameson oldantiqueguy@hotmail.com; Apr 25, 2010, 4:56:00 PM

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"Free in this world as the birds in the air, disengaged from every kind of chains, those who practice the yoga gather in Brahma the certain fruits of their works.

Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully.

The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation; he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts as animating original matter.

To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi."

one of the native forces

“Thoreau was a surprising fellow—he is not easily grasped—is elusive: yet he is one of the native forces—stands for a fact, a movement, an upheaval: Thoreau belongs to America, to the transcendental, to the protesters: then he is an outdoor man: all outdoor men everything else being equal appeal to me. Thoreau was not so precious, tender, a personality as Emerson: but he was a force—he looms up bigger and bigger: his dying does not seem to have hurt him a bit: every year has added to his fame.”

~Walt Whitman as recorded by Horace Traubel

the simple print

The text is from The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, ed. Bradford Torrey and Francis Allen, 14 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906).

Each blog post is an excerpt from that day's entry in the Journal, and although not necessarily the complete entry, it is an integral and intact section thereof.

"It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own.... One must submit abjectly to such a guide, and the reward was great." -Emerson