Solitude
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This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense,and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and e with a
strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the
stony shore of the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as
well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me,
all the elements are unusually genial to me. The bullfrogs trump
to usher in the night, and the note of the whip-poor-will is borne
on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the
fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet,
like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small
waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the
smooth refleg surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still
blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some
creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never
plete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey
now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods
without fear. They are Natures wat -- links which ect the
days of animated life.
When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there
aheir cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of
evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip.
They who e rarely to the woods take some little piece of the
forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave,
either iionally or actally. One has peeled a willow wand,
woven it int, and dropped it on my table. I could always
tell if visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended
twigs rass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of what
sex e or quality they were by some slight trace left, as a
flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as
far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering
odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the
passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the st
of his pipe.
There is only suffit space about us. Our horizon is
never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door,
nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by
us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature.
For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square
miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abao me by
men? My neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible
from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I
have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself; a distant view of
the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the
fence which skirts the woodland road oher. But for the most
part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as
much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun
and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night
there was never a traveller passed my house, or k my door,
more than if I were the first.. or last man; unless it were in the
spring, when at long intervals some came from the village to fish
for pouts -- they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond of
their own natures, and baited their hooks with darkness -- but they
sooreated, usually with light baskets, a "the world to
darkness and to me," and the black kernel of the night was never
profaned by any human neighborhood. I believe that men are
generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are
all hung, and Christi<cite>藏书网</cite>anity and dles have been introduced.
Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tehe
most i and encing society may be found in any natural
object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melanan.
There be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst
of Nature and has his seill. There was never yet such a
storm but it was AEolian music to a healthy and i ear.
Nothing rightly pel a simple and brave man to a vulgar
sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that
nothing make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters
my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and
melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them,
it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should tinue so
long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground aroy the
potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on
the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me.
Sometimes, when I pare myself with other men, it seems as if I
were more favored by the gods than they, beyond as that I
am scious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands
which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded.
I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I
have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of
solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the
woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man
was not essential to a serene ahy life. To be alone was
something unpleasant. But I was at the same time scious of a
slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In
the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was
suddenly sensible of such sweet and benefit society in Nature, in
the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around
my house, an infinite and unatable friendliness all at once
like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of
human neighborhood insignifit, and I have hought of them
since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy
and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence
of something kio me, even in ses which we are aced
to call wild and dreary, and also that the of blood to me
and huma was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no
place could ever be strao me again.
"M untimely es the sad;
Few are their days in the land of the living,
Beautiful daughter of Toscar."
Some of my pleasa hours were during the long rain-storms in
the spring or fall, which fined me to the house for the afternoon
as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and
pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which
many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those
driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the
maids stood ready with mop and pail in frories to keep the
deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all
entry, and thhly es prote. In one heavy
thunder-shower the lightning struck a large pitch pine across the
pond, making a very spicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove
from top to bottom, an inore deep, and four or five inches
wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the
other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that
mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrifid resistless
bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men
frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down
there, and want to be o folks, rainy and snowy days and
nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such -- This whole
earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. Hoart,
think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yoar,
the breadth of whose disk ot be appreciated by our instruments?
Why should I feel lonely? is not our pla in the Milky Way? This
which you put seems to me not to be the most important question.
What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows
and makes him solitary? I have found that ion of the legs
bring two minds muearer to one another. What do we want
most to dwell o? Not to many men surely, the depot, the
post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the
grocery, Bea Hill, or the Five Points, where men most gregate,
but to the perennial source of our life, when all our
experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near
the water and sends out its roots in that dire. This will vary
with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will
dig his cellar.... I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who
has accumulated what is called "a handsome property" -- though I
never got a fair view of it -- on the Walden road, driving a pair of
cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to
give up so many of the forts of life. I answered that I was very
sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home
to my bed, a him to pick his way through the darkness and the
mud thton -- ht-town -- which place he would reae
time in the m.
Any prospect of awakening or ing to life to a dead man makes
indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is
always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For
the most part we allow only outlying and tra circumstao
make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our
distra. o all things is that power which fashions
their being. o us the gra laws are tinually being
executed. o us is not the workman whom we have hired, with
whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
"How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of
Heaven and of Earth!"
"We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; we seek to
hear them, and we do not hear them; identified with the substance of
things, they ot be separated from them."
"They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify
their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to
offer sacrifices and oblations to their aors. It is an o
of subtile intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our
left, on ht; they environ us on all sides."
We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little
iing to me. we not do without the society of ossips
a little while uhese circumstances -- have our own thoughts to
cheer us? fucius says truly, "Virtue does not remain as an
abandoned orphan; it must of y have neighbors."
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a
scious effort of the mind we stand aloof from as and
their sequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a
torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the
driftwood iream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I
may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; oher hand, I may
not be affected by an actual event which appears to me much
more. I only know myself as a humay; the se, so to speak,
of thoughts and affes; and am sensible of a certain doubleness
by which I stand as remote from myself as from another. However
intense my experience, I am scious of the presend criticism
of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but
spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is
no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of
life is over, the spectatoes his way. It was a kind of fi,
a work of the imagination only, so far as he was ed. This
doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.
I find it wholesome to be alohe greater part of the time.
To be in pany, even with the best, is soon <cite></cite>wearisome and
dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the panion that
was so panionable as solitude. We are for the most part more
lonely when we go abroad amohan wheay in our
chambers. A man thinking or w is always alone, let him be
where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that
interveween a man and his fellows. The really diligent
student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as
solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer work alone in
the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel
lonesome, because he is employed; but when he es home at night he
ot sit down in a room alo the mercy of his thoughts, but
must be where he &q<var>９9lｉｂ?</var>uot;see the folks," and recreate, and, as he
thinks, remue himself for his days solitude; and hence he
wonders how the student sit alone in the house all night and
most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not
realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in
his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in
turhe same recreation and society that the latter does,
though it may be a more densed form of it.
Society is only too cheap. We meet at very short intervals,
not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We
meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a aste of
that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a
certai of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this
frequeing tolerable and that we need not e to open war.
We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the
fireside every night; we live thid are in each others way, and
stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect
for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all
important ay unications. sider the girls in a
factory -- never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better
if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live.
The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and
exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by
the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his
diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be
real. So also, owing to bodily aal health and strength, we
may be tinually cheered by a like but more normal and natural
society, and e to know that we are never alone.
I have a great deal of pany in my house; especially in the
m, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few parisons, that
some one may vey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely
than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond
itself. What pany has that lonely lake, I pray? A has
not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of
its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there
sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone --
but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of
pany; he is legion. I am no more lohan a single mullein or
dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly,
or a bumblebee. I am no more lohan the Mill Brook, or a
weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April
shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the
snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler
and inal proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond,
and sto, and fri with pine woods; who tells me stories
of old time and of ernity; aween us we mao pass a
cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things,
even without apples or cider -- a most wise and humorous friend,
whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe
or Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none show where
he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood,
invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to
stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for
she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back
farther than mythology, and she tell me the inal of every
fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the is
occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who
delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all
her childre.
The indescribable innod benefice of Nature -- of sun
and wind and rain, of summer and winter -- such health, such cheer,
they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race,
that all Nature would be affected, and the suns brightness fade,
and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and
the woods shed their leaves and put on m in midsummer, if any
man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have
intelligeh the earth? Am I not partly leaves aable
mould myself?
What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, tented?
Not my or thy great-grandfathers, but reat-grandmother
Natures universal, vegetable, botanic medies, by which she has
kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day,
and fed her health with their deg fatness. For my panacea,
instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron
and the Dead Sea, whie out of those long shallow
black-ser looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry
bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted m air. M
air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day,
why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for
the be of those who have lost their subscription ticket to
m time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite
till noonday even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples
lohat and folloard the steps of Aurora. I am no
worshipper of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old herb-doctor
AEsculapius, and who is represented on mos holding a serpent
in one hand, and iher a cup out of which the serpent
sometimes drinks; but rather of Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, who was
the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the power of
rest gods ao the vigor of youth. She robably the
only thhly sound-ditioned, healthy, and robust young lady
that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it ring.
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