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My journal is that of me which would else spill over
and run to waste, gleanings from the field which in
action I reap. I must not live for it, but in it
for the gods. They are my correspondent, to whom
daily I send off this sheet postpaid.
I am clerk in their counting-room, and at evening
transfer the account from day-book to ledger. It
is as a leaf which hangs over my head in the path.
I bend the twig and write my prayers on it; then
letting it go, the bough springs up and shows the
scrawl to heaven.
As if it were not kept shut in my desk, but were as
public a leaf as any in nature. It is papyrus by
the riverside; it is vellum in the pastures; it is
parchment on the hills, I find it everywhere as free
as the leaves which troop along the lanes in autumn.
The crow, the goose, the eagle carry my quill, and
the wind blows the leaves as far as I go. Or, if my
imagination does not soar, but gropes in slime and
mud, then I write with a reed.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
and run to waste, gleanings from the field which in
action I reap. I must not live for it, but in it
for the gods. They are my correspondent, to whom
daily I send off this sheet postpaid.
I am clerk in their counting-room, and at evening
transfer the account from day-book to ledger. It
is as a leaf which hangs over my head in the path.
I bend the twig and write my prayers on it; then
letting it go, the bough springs up and shows the
scrawl to heaven.
As if it were not kept shut in my desk, but were as
public a leaf as any in nature. It is papyrus by
the riverside; it is vellum in the pastures; it is
parchment on the hills, I find it everywhere as free
as the leaves which troop along the lanes in autumn.
The crow, the goose, the eagle carry my quill, and
the wind blows the leaves as far as I go. Or, if my
imagination does not soar, but gropes in slime and
mud, then I write with a reed.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
