Walden: Spring

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Walden: Spring

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  • Black = no variation from base (Princeton Ed.) recorded
  • Gray Background = assumed to be retained
  • Green = interlined in ink
  • Olive = interlined in pencil.
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  • Princeton_Ed: Princeton Ed. of Walden
  • Version_A: Walden, Version A (1847)
  • Version_B: Walden, Version B (1849)
  • Version_C: Walden, Version C (1849)
  • Version_D: Walden, Version D (1852)
  • Version_E: Walden, Version E (late 1852 - 1853)
  • Version_F: Walden, Version F (1853-1854)
  • Version_G: Walden, Version G (1854)

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Published by Walden: Fluid Text is published by Digital Thoreau at The State University of New York College at Geneseo..

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XVersion
Springn
Note: The title "Spring" is interlined in pencil at the top of the original leaf containing Spring 1a and appears in ink at the head of the fair copy of Spring 1a. (R. Clapper)
1a
Spring 1a written: A rewritten: F, F

(Ronald Clapper)
 The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But such was not the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new garment to take the place of the old. 1b
Spring 1b written: A rewritten: F, F
E: Spring 1b follows Spring 3 and precedes a missing leaf (#219).
A: —it froze entirely over the former year on the 22 of Dec.—last year on the 16 of December—in both years a week or two later than Flint’s pond and the river probably on account of its greater depth. Probably the sun warms shallow water through ice a foot thick—as you may make a burning glass with a piece of ice and kindle a fire with it from the sun. The ice is shallowest [compare House-Warming 12b.
F1: This pond will be so far valuable to those that deal in ice, as that it never breaks up so soon as the other ponds others in this neighborhood, both on account of its greater depth, and because it has its having no stream passing through it to melt the ice or wear it away. I never knew it to open in the course of the a winter; even not excepting that just passed, (52-&3) which gave the ponds such a severe trial was no exception. It commonly breaks up opens about the first of April, or a week or ten days later than Flint’s Pond or Fair Haven, beginning to melt first on the north side & in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. I think it indicates better than any other in this neighborhood water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being but slightly least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a day or two’s duration in March may very much retard the breaking up of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases will increase increases almost uninterruptedly.

(Ronald Clapper)
 This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not excepting that of ’52-3, which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint’s Pond and Fair-Haven, beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a few days’ duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. 1c
Spring 1c written: A rewritten: F, F
A: Spring 1c follows the four missing leaves (#193-199) after The Pond in Winter 3a and precedes The Ponds 13 and The Pond in Winter 6a. it was 36° or 3 degrees higher than Walden. In the middle 32½ degrees. This difference of 3½ degrees between the temperature of the deep water and the shallow in Flint’s pond—and the fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow—show why it should break up so much sooner than Walden.

(Ronald Clapper)
 A thermometer thrust into the middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, stood at 32°, or freezing point; near the shore at 33°; in the middle of Flint’s Pond, the same day, at 32½°; at a dozen rods from the shore, in shallow water, under ice a foot thick, at 36°. This difference of three and a half degrees between the temperature of the deep water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner than Walden. 1d
Spring 1d written: F rewritten: F
F: So, also, every one who has waded … near the bottom. In spring is interlined in pencil in the original version.

(Ronald Clapper)
 The ice in the shallowest part was at this time several inches thinner than in the middle. In mid-winter the middle had been the warmest and the ice thinnest there. So, also, every one who has waded about the shores of the pond in summer must have perceived how much warmer the water is close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a little distance out, and on the surface where it is deep, than near the bottom. In spring the sun not only exerts an influence through the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water and melts the under side of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward and downward until it is completely honey-combed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single spring rain. 1e
Spring 1e written: E rewritten: F
E: Spring 1e appears on a partial leaf from E that was attached to a leaf in F.

(Ronald Clapper)
 Ice has its grain as well as wood, and when a cake begins to rot or "comb," that is, assume the appearance of honey-comb, whatever may be its position, the air cells are at right angles with what was the water surface. 1f
Spring 1f written: F rewritten: F, G
G: A fair copy was made of only –ice from Walden, and leaves … to melt the ice beneath.

(Ronald Clapper)
 Where there is a rock or a log rising near to the surface the ice over it is much thinner, and is frequently quite dissolved by this reflected heat; and I have been told that in the experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a shallow wooden pond, though the cold air circulated underneath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a warm rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow-ice from Walden, and leaves a hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat. Also, as I have said, the bubbles themselves within the ice operate as burning glasses to melt the ice beneath.
2a
Spring 2a written: F rewritten: G

(Ronald Clapper)
 The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning, The day is an epitome of the 2b
Spring 2b written: E rewritten: F, G
E: February 24 , 1850 … I noticed with surprise, that is interlined in pencil.

(Ronald Clapper)
 year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. One pleasant morning after a cold night, February 24th, 1850, having gone to Flint’s Pond to spend the day, I noticed with surprise, that 2c
Spring 2c written: E rewritten: F, G
E & F: Spring 2c follows Spring 2d.

(Ronald Clapper)
 when I struck the ice with the head of my axe, it resounded like a gong for many rods around, or as if I had struck on a tight drum-head. 2d
Spring 2d written: E rewritten: F, G
E & F: Spring 2d follows Spring 2b and precedes Spring 2c.

(Ronald Clapper)
 The pond began to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun’s rays slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increasing tumult, which was kept up three or four hours. It took a short siesta at noon, and boomed once more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing his influence. In the right stage of the weather a pond fires its evening gun with great regularity. 2e
Spring 2e written: E rewritten: F, G
E & F: The pond does not thunder every evening … in the weather, it does does not appear in the manuscript in E or in the original copying of F but is interlined in F.
G: A fair copy was made of only But in the middle of the day … lost its resonance, and probably fishes.

(Ronald Clapper)
 But in the middle of the day, being full of cracks, and the air also being less elastic, it had completely lost its resonance, and probably fishes and muskrats could not then have been stunned by a blow on it. The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting. The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. 2f
Spring 2f written: G
G: Spring 2f is interlined.

(Ronald Clapper)
 Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should as surely as the buds expand in the spring. The earth is all alive and covered with papillæ. The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.
3
Spring 3 written: A rewritten: E, F
A: Ponds 1b follows Ponds 3. One attraction in coming to … see the spring come in does not appear in the manuscript.

(Ronald Clapper)
 One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins to be honey-combed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was merely honey-combed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in ’46, the 25th of March; in ’47, the 8th of April; in ’51, the 28th of March; in ’52, the 18th of April; in ’53, the 23d of March; in ’54, about the 7th of April.
4a
Spring 4a written: E rewritten: F

(Ronald Clapper)
 Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth. One old man, who has been a close observer of Nature, and seems as thoroughly wise in regard to all her operations as if she had been put upon the stocks when he was a boy, and he had helped to lay her keel,—who has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire more of natural lore if he should live to the age of Methuselah, — told me, and I was surprised to hear him express wonder at any of Nature’s operations, for I thought that there were no secrets between them, that one spring day he took his gun and boat, and thought that he would have a little sport with the ducks. There was ice still on the meadows, but it was all gone out of the 4b
Spring 4b written: A rewritten: F
A: Spring 4b follows a missing leaf (#219).

(Ronald Clapper)
 river, and he dropped down without obstruction from Sudbury, where he lived, to Fair Haven Pond, which he found, unexpectedly, covered for the most part with a firm field of ice. It was a warm day, and he was surprised to see so great a body of ice remaining. Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the north or back side of an island in the pond, and then concealed himself in the bushes on the south side, to await them. The ice was melted for three or four rods from the shore, and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he thought it likely that some would be along pretty soon. After he had lain still there about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but singularly grand and impressive, unlike any thing he had ever heard, gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun, he started up in haste and excited; but he found, to his surprise, that the whole body of the ice had started while he lay there, and drifted in to the shore, and the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shore,— at first gently nibbled and crumbled off, but at length heaving up and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height before it came to a stand still.
5
Spring 5 written: A rewritten: F
A & F: [Spring 5 is preceded by Spring 11.

(Ronald Clapper)
 At length the sun’s rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snow banks, and the sun dispersing the mist smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.
6
Spring 6 written: F rewritten: G
G: A fair copy was made of only fineness and of various rich colors … the ripple marks on the bottom.

(Ronald Clapper)
 Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on my way to the village, a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. The material was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors, commonly mixed with a little clay. When the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopards’ paws or birds’ feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to future geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. The various shades of the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out flatter into strands, the separate streams losing their semi-cylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and broad, running together as they are more moist, till they form an almost flat sand , still variously and beautifully shaded, but in which you can trace the original forms of vegetation; till at length, in the water itself, they are converted into banks, like those formed off the mouths of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the ripple marks on the bottom.
7a
Spring 7a written: F rewritten: G

(Ronald Clapper)
 The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank,— for the sun acts on one side first, — and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me,—had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. 7b
Spring 7b written: F
F: Spring 7b is inserted on the recto of the leaf containing House-Warming 10b.

(Ronald Clapper)
 I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally , whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe , a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat ( γείβω , labor, lapsus , to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; γοβος , globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words,) externally a dry thin leaf , even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b . The radicals of lobe are lb , the soft mass of the b (single lobed, or B, double lobed,) with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe, glb , the guttural g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of water plants have impressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.
8
Spring 8 written: F rewritten: G
F: is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? is interlined in pencil; The ear may be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, Umbilicaria, on the side of the head is interlined; with its lobe or drop. The lip … diffused by the cheek bones does not appear in the manuscript.

(Ronald Clapper)
 When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again into a myriad of others. You here see perchance how blood vessels are formed. If you look closely you observe that first there pushes forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly and blindly downward, until at last with more heat and moisture, as the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to which the most inert also yields, separates from the latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and ever and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel. Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria , on the side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip ( labium , from labor (?)) laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused it to flow yet farther.
9a
Spring 9a written: F rewritten: G

(Ronald Clapper)
 Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character, and there is no end to the heaps of liver lights and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least that Nature has some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. 9b
Spring 9b written: G rewritten: G

(Ronald Clapper)
 It convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is "in full blast" within. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit, — not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviæ from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it, are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.
10
Spring 10 written: F rewritten: G

(Ronald Clapper)
 Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces.
11
Spring 11 written: A rewritten: F, G
A & F: Spring 11 follows Spring 4b and precedes Spring 5.

(Ronald Clapper)
 When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter,— life-everlasting, golden-rods, pinweeds, and graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently than in summer even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hard-hack, meadow-sweet, and other strong stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain the earliest birds,— decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I am particularly attracted by the arching and sheaf-like top of the wool-grass; it brings back the summer to our winter memories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation to types already in the mind of man that astronomy has. It is an antique style, older than Greek or Egyptian. Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
12
Spring 12 written: A rewritten: F
A & F: [Spring 12 follows Winter Animals 7b. When Winter Animals 7b was recopied in F, Spring 12 was transferred to its present chapter.

(Ronald Clapper)
 At the approach of spring the red-squirrels got under my house, two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard; and when I stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. No, you don’t— chickaree—chickaree. They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was irresistible.
13
Spring 13 written: A rewritten: E

(Ronald Clapper)
 The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the blue-bird, the song-sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to the spring. The marsh-hawk sailing low over the meadow is already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. The sinking sound of melting snow is heard in all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. The grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire,— "et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata," —as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its flame;— the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream, and the mower draws from it betimes their winter supply. So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.
14
Spring 14 written: G

(Ronald Clapper)
 Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song-sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore,—olit,, olit, olit,— chip, chip, chip, che char,—che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore, —a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said.
15
Spring 15 written: A rewritten: B, E
A: note I shall not forget … I mean the twig and You may tell by looking … whether its winter is past or not are interlined in pencil.
B: A fair copy was made of only reflecting a summer evening sky … my first spring night in the woods.
A, B, & E: The verbs in the passage Suddenly an influx of light … wheeled and settled in the pond were written in the past tense in A, changed to the present tense in the interlining of A, copied in the present tense in B and E, and changed to the past tense in the interlining of E.

(Ronald Clapper)
 The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I looked out the window, and lo! where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the transparent pond already calm and full of hope as in a summer evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if it had intelligence with some remote horizon. I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more,—the same sweet and powerful song as of yore. O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he ; I mean the twig . This at least is not the Turdus migratorius . The pitch-pines and shrub-oaks about my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed their several characters, looked brighter, greener, and more erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. I knew that it would not rain any more. You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not. As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like weary travellers getting in late from southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings; when, driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night in the woods.
16
Spring 16 written: A rewritten: B, E, F
A: Spring 16 is followed by a missing leaf (#229).
E: A fair copy was made of only in the morning … break their fast in muddier pools.
F: A fair copy was made of only A "plump" of ducks rose … their noisier cousins.

(Ronald Clapper)
 In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large and tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificial pond for their amusement. But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. A "plump" of ducks rose at the same time and took the route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins.
17
Spring 17 written: F

(Ronald Clapper)
 For a week I heard the circling groping clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of Nature.
18
Spring 18 written: D

(Ronald Clapper)
 As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age. —
 
"Eurus ad Auroram, Nabathæaque regna recessit,
 
Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis."
 
"The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathæan kingdom,
 
And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays.
***
 
Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things,
 
The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed;
 
Or the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high
 
Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven."
19
Spring 19 written: D rewritten: F
F: A fair copy was made of only A single gentle rain … debauched veins expand with still.

(Ronald Clapper)
 A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, re-creating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year’s life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors,—why the judge does not dismiss his case,—why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.
20
Spring 20 written: D
D: Spring 20 is interlined in pencil.

(Ronald Clapper)
 "A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of vice, one approaches a little the primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of the forest which has been felled. In like manner the evil which one does in the interval of a day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again from developing themselves and destroys them.
21
Spring 21 written: D
D: After the germs of virtue … natural sentiments of man? is interlined in pencil.

(Ronald Clapper)
 "After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times from developing themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve them. As soon as the breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man does not differ much from that of the brute. Men seeing the nature of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true and natural sentiments of man?"
 
"The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger
 
Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude.
 
Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read
 
On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear
 
The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger.
 
Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended
 
To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world,
 
And mortals knew no shores but their own.
***
 
There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm
 
Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed."
22
Spring 22 written: A

(Ronald Clapper)
 On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a night-hawk, alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the underside of its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport. The Merlin it seemed to me it might be called: but I care not for its name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra firma . It appeared to have no companion in the universe,—sporting there alone,—and to need none but the morning and the ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it. Where was the parent which hatched it, its kindred, and its father in the heavens? The tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag;—or was its native nest made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the rainbow’s trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its eyry now some cliffy cloud.
23a
Spring 23a written: A rewritten: B, F

(Ronald Clapper)
 Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of jewels. 23b
Spring 23b written: B rewritten: F

(Ronald Clapper)
 Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality. All things must live in such a light. O Death, where was thy sting? O Grave, where was thy victory, then?
24
Spring 24 written: A rewritten: E
E: A fair copy was made of only With the liability to accident … will not bear to be stereotyped.

(Ronald Clapper)
 Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness, —to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp, —tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped.
25a
Spring 25a written: A rewritten: E

(Ronald Clapper)
 Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on the hill-sides here and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whippoorwill, the brown-thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood-thrush long before. 25b
Spring 25b written: A rewritten: E
A: Spring 25b follows Higher Laws 7 and precedes Brute Neighbors 9.

(Ronald Clapper)
 The phoebe had already come once more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself on humming winds with clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. 25c
Spring 25c written: A rewritten: E
A: so that you could have … the golden dust of the lotus." does not appear in the manuscript.

(Ronald Clapper)
 The sulphur-like pollen of the pitch pine soon covered the pond and the stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could have collected a barrel-ful. This is the "sulphur showers" we hear of. Even in Calidas’ drama of Sacontala, we read of "rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the lotus." And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.
26
Spring 26 written: A rewritten: E

(Ronald Clapper)
 Thus was my first year’s life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.
XVersion
Springn
Note: The title "Spring" is interlined in pencil at the top of the original leaf containing Spring 1a and appears in ink at the head of the fair copy of Spring 1a. (R. Clapper)
1a
Spring 1a written: A rewritten: F, F

(Ronald Clapper)
 r
Revision note: F1: Opening such large tracts
Opening such large tracts The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; since for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But such was not the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new garment to r
Revision note: F1: replace
replace take the place of the old. 1b
Spring 1b written: A rewritten: F, F
E: Spring 1b follows Spring 3 and precedes a missing leaf (#219).
A: —it froze entirely over the former year on the 22 of Dec.—last year on the 16 of December—in both years a week or two later than Flint’s pond and the river probably on account of its greater depth. Probably the sun warms shallow water through ice a foot thick—as you may make a burning glass with a piece of ice and kindle a fire with it from the sun. The ice is shallowest [compare House-Warming 12b.
F1: This pond will be so far valuable to those that deal in ice, as that it never breaks up so soon as the other ponds others in this neighborhood, both on account of its greater depth, and because it has its having no stream passing through it to melt the ice or wear it away. I never knew it to open in the course of the a winter; even not excepting that just passed, (52-&3) which gave the ponds such a severe trial was no exception. It commonly breaks up opens about the first of April, or a week or ten days later than Flint’s Pond or Fair Haven, beginning to melt first on the north side & in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. I think it indicates better than any other in this neighborhood water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being but slightly least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a day or two’s duration in March may very much retard the breaking up of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases will increase increases almost uninterruptedly.

(Ronald Clapper)
 This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, both on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt the ice or wear it away the ice I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not excepting that just passed of ’52-3, which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint’s Pond or and Fair-Haven, beginning to melt first on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. I think it indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a day or two’s few days’ duration in March may very much retard the breaking up opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. 1c
Spring 1c written: A rewritten: F, F
A: Spring 1c follows the four missing leaves (#193-199) after The Pond in Winter 3a and precedes The Ponds 13 and The Pond in Winter 6a. it was 36° or 3 degrees higher than Walden. In the middle 32½ degrees. This difference of 3½ degrees between the temperature of the deep water and the shallow in Flint’s pond—and the fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow—show why it should break up so much sooner than Walden.

(Ronald Clapper)
 A thermometer thrust into the middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, stood at 32°, or freezing point; near the shore at 33°; in the middle of Flint’s Pond, the same day, at 32½°; at a dozen rods from the shore, in shallow water, under ice a foot thick, at 36°. This difference of three and a half degrees between the temperature of the deep water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner than Walden.
3
Spring 3 written: A rewritten: E, F
A: Ponds 1b follows Ponds 3. One attraction in coming to … see the spring come in does not appear in the manuscript.

(Ronald Clapper)
 One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should might should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins to be honey-combed, and I could can set my heel in it as I walked walk Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting the snows the days have grown sensibly longer; and we I see how we I shall get through the winter without adding to our my wood-pile, for large fires are now no longer necessary. and I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, if I can to hear the striped squirrels bark—or the chance note of some migratory bird for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the song sparrow and the black-bird the ice was still a foot thick on the pond As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, became porous & honey-combed and imbibed more saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when 7 or 8 inches thick—though it was melted for half a rod around the shore but by tomorrow the morrow the next day evening after a warm rain followed by fog, it had wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, Last The previous year I went across the middle five days before it had disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden broke up on the 1 of April in 1846 on the 25 March
4b
Spring 4b written: A rewritten: F
A: Spring 4b follows a missing leaf (#219).

(Ronald Clapper)
 river, and he dropped down without obstruction from Sudbury, where he lived, to Fair Haven Pond, which he found, unexpectedly, was covered for the most part with a firm field of ice. It was a very warm spring day and he was astonished surprised to see such a body of ice remaining. Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the north or back side of an island in the pond, and then concealed himself in the bushes on the south side, to await them. The ice was melted out three or four rods from the shore, and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he thought it likely that some would be along pretty soon. After he had lain still there about an hour he suddenly heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but singularly grand and impressive, and unlike anything he had ever heard before gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun, he started up with excitement and found in haste & excited but he found to his surprise that the whole body of the ice had started while he lay there, and drifted in to the shore, and the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shore,— and at first gently nibbling and crumbling off—and but at length heaving up and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height before it because still and silent again came to a stand-still
5
Spring 5 written: A rewritten: F
A & F: [Spring 5 is preceded by Spring 11.

(Ronald Clapper)
 At length the sun’s rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snow banks, and the sun dispersing the mist smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a myriad tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.—As I go back and forth over the railroad through the deep cut I have seen where the clayey sand like lava had flowed down when it thawed and as it streamed it assumed the forms of vegetation, of vines and stout pulpy leaves—unaccountably interesting and beautiful—which methinks I have seen imitated somewhere in bronze—as if its course were so to speak a diagonal between fluids & solids—and it were hesitating whether to stream in to a river, or into vegetation—for vegetation too is such a stream as a river, only of slower current
11
Spring 11 written: A rewritten: F, G
A & F: Spring 11 follows Spring 4b and precedes Spring 5.

(Ronald Clapper)
 But we must not let the winter go so easily. When the ground is completely partially bare of snow, and a few warm days have dried its surface here and there it is pleasant to compare the faint first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which has withstood the winter,— life-everlasting, asters, goldenrods & graceful wild grasses whose winter is more stately than their summer even, as if not till then their beauty was ripe—the various thistles sedges and other strong stemmed plants which have not even yet sown their seeds—and graceful reeds and rushes whose winter is more gay and stately than their summer—as if not till then was their beauty ripe.—Wild oats perchance and life-everlasting whose autumn has not arrived cotton grass, cat-tail, mulleins, hardhack, meadow-sweet &c. those unexhausted granaries of winter, whose seeds entertain the earliest birds,— decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I never tire of admiring their arching drooping and sheaflike tops. They bring back the summer to our winter memories, and are among the forms which art loves to perpetuate They are an antique style, older than Greek or Egyptian—a lighter and more graceful Ionic—a richer Corinthian—a simpler Doric—a more various Composite. The beauty of the drooping and sheaf-like head of the rush all men have admired in all ages—and it must have some such near and unaccountable relation to human life, as astronomy has to those laws and figures which first existed in the mind of man All the the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king almost tyrant described as rude and boisterous but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
12
Spring 12 written: A rewritten: F
A & F: [Spring 12 follows Winter Animals 7b. When Winter Animals 7b was recopied in F, Spring 12 was transferred to its present chapter.

(Ronald Clapper)
 Sometimes at the approach of spring they got under my house, two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard; and when I stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. No, you don’t— Chickaree! Chickaree They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was irresistible.
13
Spring 13 written: A rewritten: E

(Ronald Clapper)
 The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warblings heard over the bare and moist fields from the song-sparrow—the blue-bird and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to the spring. The marsh-hawk sailing low over the meadow is already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. The sough of melting snow is heard in all dells and on all hill sides, and by the running river banks and the ice dissolves apace in all ponds. The earth sends forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun—not yellow like the sun but green is the color of its flame;— Grass It is the symbol of perpetual youth its blade like a long green ribbon —longer than was ever woven in the factories of men— streaming from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its last year’s spear of withered hay hay with the fresh life below. It is as steady a growth grows as steadily as the rill which oozes out of the ground. and indeed is almost identical with that, for in the fertile and growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream, and the mower cuts from this outwelling supply—what their several needs require So our human life but dies down to the surface of nature—but its root—and still puts forth its green blade still to eternity.
15
Spring 15 written: A rewritten: B, E
A: note I shall not forget … I mean the twig and You may tell by looking … whether its winter is past or not are interlined in pencil.
B: A fair copy was made of only reflecting a summer evening sky … my first spring night in the woods.
A, B, & E: The verbs in the passage Suddenly an influx of light … wheeled and settled in the pond were written in the past tense in A, changed to the present tense in the interlining of A, copied in the present tense in B and E, and changed to the past tense in the interlining of E.

(Ronald Clapper)
 The change from storm and winter to fair and serene weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light filled the house though it is late in the day the evening was at hand and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I look out on the pond which was cold grey ice but yesterday—and already the signs of fair weather were there and it was become a calm & smooth lake, full of promise as a summer evening sky—seeming to have some intelligence with distant horizons see that the pond is already calm & full of hope as on a summer evening, where was cold grey ice where yesterday was cold grey ice, lo, there lies the transparent pond already calm & full of hope as it And a summer evening sky was already reflected in its bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if it had intelligence with distant horizons I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose sound has the same meaning it was wont to have—But where does the minstrel really perch? Who could ever find the trig he sits on? note I shall not forget for many a thousand more,—the same old sound as of yore. O the evening robin, at the close of a New England summer day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he ; I mean the twig . This at least is not the Turdus migratorius . The green pitch pines & the shrub oaks about my house, which had so long drooped, & cowered all winter —suddenly resumed their several characters looked brighter, more green & more alive and erect, as if entirely effectually cleansed & restored by the rain—and fitted once more to express their share of immortal beauty, and make a part of this world which is called they call κόбмοѕ or beauty I knew that it would not rain any more. You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, aye, by looking at your wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not. So opened the spring of 1846 As it grew darker, I was startled by the clank of geese flying low over the woods, like weary travellers late getting in from southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolations. As I stood at the door, I could hear the rush of their wings; as driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond.
16
Spring 16 written: A rewritten: B, E, F
A: Spring 16 is followed by a missing leaf (#229).
E: A fair copy was made of only in the morning … break their fast in muddier pools.
F: A fair copy was made of only A "plump" of ducks rose … their noisier cousins.

(Ronald Clapper)
 In the morning I watched them from my door through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large and tumultuous that the pond seemed like an artificial pond for their amusement. But when I reached stood on the shore they at once rose up with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular clank clank from the commodore at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. A compact flock of ducks also rose up at the same time and took the route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins.
 
"Behold how the wave of the sea
 
Is made smooth by the calm;
 
Behold how the duck dives,
 
Behold how the crane travels,
 
And Titan shines constantly bright.
 
The shadows of the clouds are moving,
 
The works of man shine."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
22
Spring 22 written: A

(Ronald Clapper)
 On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the banks bank of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats burrow lurk I heard a singular rattling or perhaps shuttle-like sound, not musical but almost like the rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a night-hawk, alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two over and over, and showing the underside of its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, and was of or like the pearly color of the inside of a shell. The This sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry is are associated with that sport. The Merlin it seemed to me it might be named but I prefer not to know what it is called called but I care not for its name It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the noblest larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, It was most high and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra firma . It seemed appeared to have no companion in the universe,—sporting there alone,—and to need none but the morning and the ether with which it played. It seemed was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it , though it had no mate in the world Where was the parent that which hatched it, its kindred, and its father in the heavens? The tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag;—or was its native nest made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the rainbow’s trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its eyry was perchance now some cliffy cloud.
23a
Spring 23a written: A rewritten: B, F

(Ronald Clapper)
 Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of jewels—This spring ramble was very invigorating and purgative of wintry fumes and dumps
24
Spring 24 written: A rewritten: E
E: A fair copy was made of only With the liability to accident … will not bear to be stereotyped.

(Ronald Clapper)
 Our village life would stagnate , I think, if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness, —to wade sometimes in meadows marshes where only the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things should be mysterious and unexplorable by us that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast features and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion that which disgusts and disheartens us and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go round & out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my consolation compensation for this. I love to see that nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; the that tender organizations that can be so serenely squashed out of existence like soft pulp —tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over by a wheel in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see the trivialness of it, and the little amount that is to be made of it. The impression made upon a wise man is of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground to occupy long at a time It must be very expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped.
25a
Spring 25a written: A rewritten: E

(Ronald Clapper)
 Early in May, or by the last of April the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, gave them the appearance imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape especially in cloudy days, of the sun just breaking through mists and shining on them. Their green bursting buds and expanding leaves scattered a slight brightness like sun shine over the hill sides.
 
When the oaks are in the gray
 
Then farmers plant away
 faintly on the hill sides here & there. On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whippoorwill, the brown-thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, the chewink, and other birds. Often when I expected to find a woodchuck or rabbit or a grey squirrel, it was the ground robin rustling the leaves —the wood thrush I had heard long before 25b
Spring 25b written: A rewritten: E
A: Spring 25b follows Higher Laws 7 and precedes Brute Neighbors 9.

(Ronald Clapper)
 Generally I was the friend and defender of such of the brute creation as were my neighbors. Walden was formerly a place of eagles—and the woods are still extensive & various. I amused myself with watching what life still remains—my only companions. While I was building my house a pair of robins were forward to take advantage of this protection against birds of prey and built their nest in one day in a pitch pine which I had left growing against the rear within 3 feet of my hammer and though the scraps of shingles were falling all over the tree—and there they dwelt, till at length some boys destroyed the eggs. Sometimes a phoebe came The phoebe came once more and looked in at my door or and window to see if my house was cavern-like enough like a cave for her, sustaining herself on humming winds with clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises , and frequently she flitted through and out at the opposite window 25c
Spring 25c written: A rewritten: E
A: so that you could have … the golden dust of the lotus." does not appear in the manuscript.

(Ronald Clapper)
 The sulphur-like pollen of the pitch pine already soon covered the pond and the stones and rotten wood along the shore with its yellow dust so that you could have collected a barrel-full. These are the sulphur showers we hear of Even in Calidas’ drama of Sacontala, we read of "rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the lotus." And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.
26
Spring 26 written: A rewritten: E

(Ronald Clapper)
 Thus was my first year’s life in the woods completed; and the second year was like unto it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847 .

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