I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived6 "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretence9 of going à la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer—a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere1 idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean.[Pg 53] Some, however, would derive7 the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant10 of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering11 river, which is all the while sedulously13 seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit14 in us, to go forth15 and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.
It is true we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering16, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the work is but retracing17 our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return—prepared to send back our embalmed19 hearts only as relics20 to our desolate21 kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again—if you have paid your[Pg 54] debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.
To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights22 of a new, or rather an old, order—not Equestrians24 or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honourable25 class, I trust. The chivalric27 and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided28 into, the Walker,—not the Knight23, but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People.
We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practised this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite29 leisure, freedom, and independence, which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed[Pg 55] as to lose themselves for half-an-hour in the woods; but I know very well that they have confined themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions30 they may make to belong to this select class. No doubt they were elevated for a moment as by the reminiscence of a previous state of existence, when even they were foresters and outlaws31.
"When he came to grene wode,
In a mery mornynge,
There he herde the notes small
Of byrdes mery syngynge.
"It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,
That I was last here;
Me lyste a lytell for to shote
At the donne dere."
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them—as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon—I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
[Pg 56]
I, who cannot stay in my chamber33 for a single day without acquiring some rust26, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem34 the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled35 with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned36 for,—I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbours who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, ay, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of—sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over against one's self whom you have known all the morning, to starve out a garrison38 to whom you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and down the street, scattering39 a legion of antiquated40 and house-bred notions and whims41 to[Pg 57] the four winds for an airing—and so the evil cure itself.
How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not stand it at all. When, early in the summer afternoon, we have been shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste past those houses with purely43 Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such an air of repose44 about them, my companion whispers that probably about these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never turns in, but for ever stands out and erect45, keeping watch over the slumberers.
No doubt temperament46, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half-an-hour.
But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin5 to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours—as the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of[Pg 58] the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates47 when walking. When a traveller asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his library, but his study is out of doors."
Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a certain roughness of character—will cause a thicker cuticle48 to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe manual labour robs the hands of some of their delicacy49 of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible50 to some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will fall off fast enough—that the natural remedy is to be found in the proportion which the night bears[Pg 59] to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous51 palms of the labourer are conversant52 with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism53, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us if we walked only in the garden or a mall? Even some sects54 of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves, since they did not go to the woods. "They planted groves55 and walks of Platanes," where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods if they do not carry us thither57. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head, and I am not where my body is—I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the[Pg 60] woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder58, when I find myself so implicated59 even in what are called good works—for this may sometimes happen.
My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted60 them. An absolutely new prospect61 is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single farmhouse62 which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions63 of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities64 of the landscape within a circle of ten miles' radius65, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite familiar to you.
Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform66 the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A people who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand! I saw the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, and some worldly miser68 with a [Pg 61]surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old posthole in the midst of paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing69 in the middle of a boggy70, stygian fen67, surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been driven, and looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor.
I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road except where the fox and the mink71 do: first along by the river, and then the brook72, and then the meadow and the wood-side. There are square miles in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see civilisation and the abodes73 of man afar. The farmers and their works are scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows74. Man and his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and manufactures and agriculture, even politics, the most alarming of them all,—I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape. Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveller thither. If you would go to the political world, follow the great road—follow [Pg 62]that market-man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a beanfield into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half-hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth's surface where a man does not stand from one year's end to another and there, consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the cigar-smoke of a man.
The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are the arms and legs—a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travellers. The word is from the Latin villa42, which, together with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives75 from veho, to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which things are carried. They who get their living by teaming were said vellaturam facere. Hence, too, apparently76, the Latin word vilis and our vile77; also villain78. This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them, without travelling themselves.
Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do[Pg 63] not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern79 or grocery or livery-stable or dep?t to which they lead. I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure. I walk out into a Nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in mythology80 than in any history of America, so called, that I have seen.
At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and mantraps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed81 to mean trespassing82 on some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment83 of[Pg 64] it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.
What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism84 in Nature which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly85 symbolical86 of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably87 settle south-west, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted88 pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle,—varies a few degrees, and does not always point due south-west, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always settles between west and south-south-west. The future lies[Pg 65] that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. The outline which would bound my walks would be, not a circle, but a parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits which have been thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward89, in which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round irresolute90, sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a thousandth time, that I will walk into the south-west or west. Eastward91 I go only by force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads me. It is hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or sufficient wildness and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not excited by the prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward the setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in it of enough consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness92, and ever I am leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. I should not lay so much stress on this fact, if I did not believe that something like this is the prevailing93 tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may[Pg 66] say that mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed the phenomenon of a south-eastward migration94 in the settlement of Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging from the moral and physical character of the first generation of Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. "The world ends there," say they; "beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea." It is unmitigated East where they live.
We go eastward to realise history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide.
I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk with the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin to the migratory95 instinct in birds and quadrupeds,—which, in[Pg 67] some instances, is known to have affected96 the squirrel tribe, impelling97 them to a general and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their dead,—that something like a furor98 which affects the domestic cattle in the spring, and which is referred to a worm in their tails,—affects both nations and individuals, either perennially100 or from time to time. Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker101, I should probably take that disturbance102 into account.
"Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes."
Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily, and tempts104 us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain-ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapour only, which were last gilded105 by his rays. The islands of Atlantis, and the islands and gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear to have been the Great West of the[Pg 68] ancients, enveloped106 in mystery and poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those fables107?
Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. The head of men in those days scented110 fresh pastures from afar.
"And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay;
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."
Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich and varied113 in its proportions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as this is? Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that "the species of large trees are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in the United States there are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain114 this size." Later botanists115 more than confirm his observations. Humboldt came to America to realise his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, and[Pg 69] he beheld116 it in its greatest perfection in the primitive117 forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently118 described. The geographer119 Guyot, himself a European, goes farther—farther than I am ready to follow him; yet not when he says: "As the plant is made for the animal, as the vegetable world is made for the animal world, America is made for the man of the Old World.... The man of the Old World sets out upon his way. Leaving the highlands of Asia, he descends120 from station to station towards Europe. Each of his steps is marked by a new civilisation superior to the preceding, by a greater power of development. Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean, the bounds of which he knows not, and turns upon his footprints for an instant." When he has exhausted the rich soil of Europe, and reinvigorated himself, "then recommences his adventurous121 career westward as in the earliest ages." So far Guyot.
From this western impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The younger Michaux, in his Travels West of the Alleghanies in 1802, says that the common inquiry122 in the newly settled West was, "'From what part of the world have you come?' As[Pg 70] if these vast and fertile regions would naturally be the place of meeting and common country of all the inhabitants of the globe."
To use an obsolete123 Latin word, I might say, Ex Oriente lux; ex Occidente FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit.
Sir Francis Head, an English traveller and a Governor-General of Canada, tells us that "in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New World, Nature has not only outlined her words on a larger scale, but has painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly124 colours than she used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World.... The heavens of America appear infinitely125 higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains broader." This statement will do at least to set against Buffon's account of this part of the world and its productions.
Linn?us said long ago, "Nescio qu? facies l?ta, glabra plantis Americanis: I know not what there is of joyous126 and smooth in the aspect of American plants"; and I think that in this country there are no, or at most very few, African? besti?, African beasts, as the[Pg 71] Romans called them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the habitation of man. We are told that within three miles of the centre of the East Indian city of Singapore, some of the inhabitants are annually128 carried off by tigers; but the traveller can lie down in the woods at night almost anywhere in North America without fear of wild beasts.
These are encouraging testimonies129. If the moon looks larger here than in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on man—as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically130 under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky—our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains—our intellect generally on a grander[Pg 72] scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains and forests—and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur131 to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear to the traveller something, he knows not what, of l?ta and glabra, of joyous and serene132, in our very faces. Else to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?
To Americans I hardly need to say:
"Westward the star of empire takes its way."
As a true patriot133, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favourably134 situated135 on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country.
Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England; though we may be estranged136 from the South, we sympathise with the West. There is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of to-day.
Some months ago I went to see a panorama137 of the Rhine. It was like a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in something more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and [Pg 73]repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were music to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. There were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I knew only in history. They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There seemed to come up from its waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed music as of Crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated along under the spell of enchantment138, as if I had been transported to an heroic age, and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry139.
Soon after I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri and heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona's Cliff,—still thinking more of the future than of the past or present,—I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
[Pg 74]
The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation140 of the World. Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plough and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics141 and barks which brace142 mankind. Our ancestors were savages143. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable108. The founders145 of every State which has risen to eminence146 have drawn147 their nourishment148 and vigour149 from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the Northern forests who were.
I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. We require an infusion150 of hemlock-spruce or arbor-vit? in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour151 the marrow152 of the koodoo and other antelopes154 raw, as a matter of course. Some of our Northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer155, as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft. And herein, perchance,[Pg 75] they have stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughter-house pork to make a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilisation can endure,—as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured156 raw.
There are some intervals157 which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to which I would migrate,—wild lands where no settler has squatted158; to which, methinks, I am already acclimated159.
The African hunter Cummings tells us that the skin of the eland, as well as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild antelope153, so much a part and parcel of Nature, that his very person should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of Nature which he most haunts. I feel no disposition160 to be satirical, when the trapper's coat emits the odour of musquash even; it is a sweeter scent109 to me than that which commonly exhales161 from the merchant's or the scholar's garments. When I go into their wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy162 plains and flowery meads which they have frequented, but of dusty merchants' exchanges and libraries rather.
[Pg 76]
A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter colour than white for a man—a denizen163 of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the naturalist164 says, "A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant bleached165 by the gardener's art, compared with a fine, dark green one, growing vigorously in the open fields."
Ben Jonson exclaims:
"How near to good is what is fair!"
So I would say:
How near to good is what is wild!
Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued166 to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly167 and never rested from his labours, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate168 stems of primitive forest trees.
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious169 and quaking swamps.[Pg 77] When, formerly170, I have analysed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated172 purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely173 by a few square rods of impermeable174 and unfathomable bog—a natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no richer parterres to my eyes than the dense175 beds of dwarf176 andromeda (Cassandra calyculata) which cover these tender places on the earth's surface. Botany cannot go further than tell me the names of the shrubs177 which grow there—the high-blueberry, panicled andromeda, lambkill, azalea, and rhodora—all standing in the quaking sphagnum. I often think that I should like to have my house front on this mass of dull red bushes, omitting other flower plots and borders, transplanted spruce and trim box, even gravelled walks—to have this fertile spot under my windows, not a few imported barrowfuls of soil only to cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my parlour, behind this plot, instead of behind that meagre assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and Art which I call my front yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance when the[Pg 78] carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the passer-by as the dweller178 within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments179, acorn-tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up to the very edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be the best place for a dry cellar), so that there be no access on that side to citizens. Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
Yes, though you may think me perverse180, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighbourhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived182, or else of a dismal183 swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labours, citizens, for me!
My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness184. Give me the ocean, the desert or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and solitude185 compensate186 for want of moisture and fertility. The traveller Burton says of it—"Your morale187 improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable188 and single-minded.... In the desert, spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal existence." They who have been travelling long on the steppes of[Pg 79] Tartary say—"On re-entering cultivated lands, the agitation189, perplexity, and turmoil190 of civilisation oppressed and suffocated191 us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia." When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable, and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place,—a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow of Nature. The wild-wood covers the virgin192 mould,—and the same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck. There are the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts193 and wild honey.
To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of[Pg 80] those primitive and rugged194 trees there was, methinks, a tanning principle which hardened and consolidated195 the fibres of men's thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate196 days of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness; and we no longer produce tar37 and turpentine.
The civilised nations—Greece, Rome, England—have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas197 for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure198 of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous199 fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.
It is said to be the task of the American "to work the virgin soil," and that "agriculture here already assumes proportions unknown everywhere else." I think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems200 the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects more natural. I was surveying for a man the other day a single straight line one hundred and thirty-two rods long, through a swamp, at whose entrance might have been written the words which[Pg 81] Dante read over the entrance to the infernal regions—"Leave all hope, ye that enter,"—that is, of ever getting out again; where at one time I saw my employer actually up to his neck and swimming for his life in his property, though it was still winter. He had another similar swamp which I could not survey at all, because it was completely under water; and nevertheless, with regard to a third swamp, which I did survey from a distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts, that he would not part with it for any consideration, on account of the mud which it contained. And that man intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole in the course of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his spade. I refer to him only as the type of a class.
The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the sword and the lance, but the bush-whack, the turf cutter, the spade, and the bog-hoe, rusted201 with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian's corn-field into the meadow, and pointed202 out the way which he had not the skill to follow. He had no better implement203 with which to intrench himself in the land[Pg 82] than a clamshell. But the farmer is armed with plough and spade.
In Literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilised free and wild thinking in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the Scriptures204 and Mythologies205, not learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which 'mid8 falling dews wings its way above the fens206. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,—and not a taper207 lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.
English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets—Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included—breathes no quite fresh and in this sense wild strain. It is an essentially208 tame and civilised literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness is a green wood,—her wild man a Robin209 Hood181. There is plenty of genial210 love of Nature, but not so much of[Pg 83] Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild man in her, became extinct.
The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half-smothered between two musty leaves in a library,—ay, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.
I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning211 for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is tame. I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account which contents me of that Nature with[Pg 84] which even I am acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, in short, can give. Mythology comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Grecian mythology its root in than English literature. Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight212; and, which it still bears, whenever its pristine213 vigour is unabated. All other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses; but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles214, as old as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives.
The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their crop, it remains215 to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past—as it is to some extent a fiction of the present—the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology.
The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are[Pg 85] not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,—others merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic. Some forms of disease, even, may prophesy216 forms of health. The geologist217 has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which were extinct before man was created, and hence "indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence." The Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, which transcend218 the order of time and development. They are the sublimest219 recreation of the intellect. The partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot.
In short, all good things are wild and free[Pg 86] There is something in a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human voice,—take the sound of a bugle220 in a summer night for instance,—which by its wildness, to speak without satire221, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neighbours wild men, not tame ones. The wilderness of the savage144 is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet.
I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights,—any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigour; as when my neighbour's cow breaks out of her pasture early in the spring and boldly swims the river, a cold, grey tide, twenty-five or thirty rods wide, swollen222 by the melted snow. It is the buffalo223 crossing the Mississippi. This exploit confers some dignity on the herd32 of my eyes—already dignified224. The seeds of instinct are preserved under the thick hides of cattle and horses, like seeds in the bowels225 of the earth, an indefinite period.
Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a dozen bullocks and cows running about and frisking in unwieldy sport, like huge rats, even like kittens. They[Pg 87] shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as well as by their activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas! a sudden loud Whoa! would have damped their ardour at once, reduced them from venison to beef, and stiffened226 their sides and sinews like the locomotive. Who but the Evil One has cried, "Whoa!" to mankind? Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery227, is meeting the horse and the ox half way. Whatever part the whip has touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a side of any of the supple228 cat tribe, as we speak of a side of beef?
I rejoice that horses and steers229 have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly230, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilisation; and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their natures broken that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as well as[Pg 88] another; if a high one, individual excellence231 is to be regarded. Any man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve so rare a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius says—"The skins of the tiger and the leopard232, when they are tanned, are as the skins of the dog and the sheep tanned." But it is not the part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious233; and tanning their skins for shoes is not the best use to which they can be put.
When looking over a list of men's names in a foreign language, as of military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been named by the child's rigmarole—Iery wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan. I see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming234 over the earth, and to each the herdsman has affixed236 some barbarous sound in his own dialect. The names of men are of course as cheap and as meaningless as Bose and Tray, the names of dogs.
[Pg 89]
Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus, and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own, because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own. At present, our only true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who, from his peculiar127 energy, was called "Buster" by his playmates, and this rightly supplanted237 his Christian238 name. Some travellers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame; and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.
I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men in herds235 for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my neighbour, who bears the familiar epithet239 William, or Edwin, takes it off with his jacket. It does[Pg 90] not adhere to him when asleep or in anger, or aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some of his kin4 at such a time his original wild name in some jaw-breaking or else melodious240 tongue.
Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilisation destined241 to have a speedy limit.
In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity242. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil—not that which trusts to heating manures and improved implements243 and modes of culture only.
Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered244 a fool's allowance.
There may be an excess even of informing light. Niépce, a Frenchman, discovered "actinism," that power in the sun's rays[Pg 91] which produces a chemical effect,—that granite245 rocks, and stone structures, and statues of metal, "are all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of sunshine, and, but for provisions of Nature no less wonderful, would soon perish under the delicate touch of the most subtile of the agencies of the universe." But he observed that "those bodies which underwent this change during the daylight possessed246 the power of restoring themselves to their original conditions during the hours of night, when this excitement was no longer influencing them." Hence it has been inferred that "the hours of darkness are as necessary to the creation as we know night and sleep are to the organic kingdom." Not even does the moon shine every night, but gives place to darkness.
I would not have every man nor every part of man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate247 use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.
There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knowledge,—[Pg 92]Gramática parda, tawny248 grammar,—a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.
We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion249 of Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power; and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit250 that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers—for what are the libraries of science but files of newspapers?—a man accumulates a myriad251 facts, lays them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a horse and leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,—Go to grass. You have-eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop. The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of May; though I have heard of one unnatural[Pg 93] farmer who kept his cow in the barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle.
A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful,—while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
My desire for knowledge is intermittent252; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial99 and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is the lighting253 up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely254 and with impunity255 in the face of the sun: Ω? τι νοων κε?νον νο?σει? [Greek: H?s ti no?n ny keinon noêseis],—"You will not [Pg 94]perceive that, as perceiving a particular thing," say the Chaldean Oracles256.
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds257 us where we did not know before that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist,—and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue258 of his relation to the law-maker. "That is active duty," says the Vishnu Purana, "which is not for our bondage259; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist."
It is remarkable260 how few events or crises there are in our histories; how little exercised we have been in our minds; how few experiences we have had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity,—though it be with struggle through long, dark, muggy261 nights or seasons of gloom. It would be well if all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this trivial[Pg 95] comedy or farce262. Dante, Bunyan, and others, appear to have been exercised in their minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of culture such as our district schools and colleges do not contemplate171. Even Mahomet, though many may scream at his name, had a good deal more to live for, ay, and to die for, than they have commonly.
When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is walking on a railroad, then indeed the cars go by without his hearing them. But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars return.
"Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen,
And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms,
Traveller of the windy glens,
Why hast thou left my ear so soon?"
While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their relation to Nature men appear to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. How little appreciation263 of the beauty of the landscape there is among us! We shall have to be told that the Greeks called the world Κ?σμο? [Greek: Kosmos], Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so,[Pg 96] and we esteem264 it at best only a curious philological265 fact.
For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and transitional and transient forays only, and my patriotism266 and allegiance to the State into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the wisp through bogs267 and sloughs268 unimaginable, but no moon nor fire-fly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her features. The walker in the familiar fields which stretch around my native town sometimes finds himself in another land than is described in their owners' deeds, as it were in some far-away field on the confines of the actual Concord269, where her jurisdiction270 ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These farms which I have myself surveyed, these bounds which I have set up, appear dimly still as through a mist; but they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade from the surface of the glass; and the picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from beneath. The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no trace, and it will have no anniversary.
[Pg 97]
I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles271 of the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me,—to whom the sun was servant,—who had not gone into society in the village,—who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding's cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity272 or not. They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The farmer's cart-path, which leads directly through their hall, does not in the least put them out,—as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their neighbour,—notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity273 of their lives. Their coat of arms is simply a lichen274. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics[Pg 98] were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labour. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled275 and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots and excrescences embayed.
But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out of my mind even now while I speak and endeavour to recall them, and recollect276 myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I think I should move out of Concord.
We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove56 in our minds is laid waste,—sold feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig277 left for them to perch18 on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint[Pg 99] shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry278. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin-China grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those gra-a-ate men you hear of!
We hug the earth—how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before,—so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them. But, above all, I discovered around me,—it was near the end of June,—on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and delicate red cone-like blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried straightway to the village the topmost spire103, and showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the streets,—for it was court-week,—and to farmers and lumber-dealers and wood-choppers and hunters,[Pg 100] and not one had ever seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns as perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved by them. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs279 of the wood every summer for ages, as well over the heads of Nature's red children as of her white ones; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them.
Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty280 and antique in our employments and habits of thought. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament—the gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early and kept up early, and to be where he is to be in[Pg 101] season, in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag281 for all the world,—healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses282, to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive283 slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master many times since last he heard the note?
The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all plaintiveness284. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, "There is one of us well, at any rate,"—and with a sudden gush285 return to my senses.
We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold grey day, reached a clear stratum286 in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon, and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow eastward, as[Pg 102] if we were the only motes287 in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary288 phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen for ever and ever an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure289 the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still.
The sun sets on some retired290 meadow, where no house is visible, with all the glory and splendour that it lavishes291 on cities, and, perchance, as it has never set before,—where there is but a solitary marsh292-hawk to have his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to meander12, winding293 slowly round a decaying stump294. We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding295 the withered296 grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple297 or a murmur298 to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.
So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than[Pg 103] ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening299 light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn.
H. D. Thoreau.
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3
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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4
kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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5
akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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6
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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7
derive
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| v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自 | |
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8
mid
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| adj.中央的，中间的 | |
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9
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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10
vagrant
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| n.流浪者，游民；adj.流浪的，漂泊不定的 | |
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meandering
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| 蜿蜒的河流，漫步，聊天 | |
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12
meander
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| n.河流的曲折，漫步，迂回旅行；v.缓慢而弯曲地流动，漫谈 | |
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13
sedulously
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| ad.孜孜不倦地 | |
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14
hermit
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| n.隐士，修道者；隐居 | |
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15
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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16
persevering
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| a.坚忍不拔的 | |
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17
retracing
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| v.折回( retrace的现在分词 )；回忆；回顾；追溯 | |
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18
perch
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| n.栖木，高位，杆；v.栖息，就位，位于 | |
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19
embalmed
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| adj.用防腐药物保存（尸体）的v.保存（尸体）不腐( embalm的过去式和过去分词 )；使不被遗忘；使充满香气 | |
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20
relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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21
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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22
knights
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| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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23
knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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24
equestrians
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| n.骑手（equestrian的复数形式） | |
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25
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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26
rust
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| n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退 | |
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27
chivalric
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| 有武士气概的，有武士风范的 | |
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28
subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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29
requisite
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| adj.需要的，必不可少的；n.必需品 | |
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30
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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31
outlaws
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| 歹徒，亡命之徒( outlaw的名词复数 )； 逃犯 | |
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32
herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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33
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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34
redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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35
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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36
atoned
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| v.补偿，赎（罪）( atone的过去式和过去分词 )；补偿，弥补，赎回 | |
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37
tar
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| n.柏油，焦油；vt.涂或浇柏油/焦油于 | |
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38
garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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39
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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40
antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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41
WHIMS
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| 虚妄，禅病 | |
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42
villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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43
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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44
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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45
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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46
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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47
ruminates
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| v.沉思( ruminate的第三人称单数 )；反复考虑；反刍；倒嚼 | |
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48
cuticle
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| n.表皮 | |
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49
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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50
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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51
callous
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| adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的 | |
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52
conversant
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| adj.亲近的，有交情的，熟悉的 | |
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53
heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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54
sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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55
groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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56
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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57
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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58
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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59
implicated
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| adj.密切关联的；牵涉其中的 | |
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60
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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61
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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62
farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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63
dominions
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| 统治权( dominion的名词复数 )； 领土； 疆土； 版图 | |
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64
capabilities
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| n.能力( capability的名词复数 )；可能；容量；[复数]潜在能力 | |
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65
radius
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| n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限 | |
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66
deform
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| vt.损坏…的形状；使变形，使变丑；vi.变形 | |
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67
fen
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| n.沼泽，沼池 | |
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68
miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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69
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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70
boggy
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| adj.沼泽多的 | |
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71
mink
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| n.貂，貂皮 | |
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72
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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73
abodes
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| 住所( abode的名词复数 )； 公寓； （在某地的）暂住； 逗留 | |
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74
burrows
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| n.地洞( burrow的名词复数 )v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的第三人称单数 )；翻寻 | |
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75
derives
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| v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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76
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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77
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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78
villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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79
tavern
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| n.小旅馆，客栈；小酒店 | |
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80
mythology
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| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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81
construed
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| v.解释（陈述、行为等）( construe的过去式和过去分词 )；翻译，作句法分析 | |
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82
trespassing
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| [法]非法入侵 | |
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83
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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84
magnetism
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| n.磁性，吸引力，磁学 | |
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85
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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86
symbolical
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| a.象征性的 | |
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87
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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88
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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89
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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90
irresolute
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| adj.无决断的，优柔寡断的，踌躇不定的 | |
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91
eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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92
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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93
prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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94
migration
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| n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙 | |
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95
migratory
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| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
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96
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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97
impelling
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| adj.迫使性的，强有力的v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的现在分词 ) | |
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98
furor
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| n.狂热；大骚动 | |
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99
perennial
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| adj.终年的；长久的 | |
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100
perennially
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| adv.经常出现地；长期地；持久地；永久地 | |
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101
broker
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| n.中间人，经纪人；v.作为中间人来安排 | |
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102
disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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103
spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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104
tempts
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| v.引诱或怂恿（某人）干不正当的事( tempt的第三人称单数 )；使想要 | |
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105
gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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106
enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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107
fables
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| n.寓言( fable的名词复数 )；神话，传说 | |
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108
fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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109
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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110
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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111
twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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112
mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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113
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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114
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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115
botanists
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| n.植物学家，研究植物的人( botanist的名词复数 ) | |
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116
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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117
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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118
eloquently
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| adv. 雄辩地(有口才地, 富于表情地) | |
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119
geographer
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| n.地理学者 | |
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120
descends
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| v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜 | |
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121
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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122
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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123
obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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124
costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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125
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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126
joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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127
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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128
annually
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| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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129
testimonies
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| （法庭上证人的）证词( testimony的名词复数 )； 证明，证据 | |
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130
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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131
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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132
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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133
patriot
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| n.爱国者，爱国主义者 | |
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134
favourably
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| adv. 善意地，赞成地 =favorably | |
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135
situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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136
estranged
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| adj.疏远的，分离的 | |
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137
panorama
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| n.全景，全景画，全景摄影，全景照片[装置] | |
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138
enchantment
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| n.迷惑，妖术，魅力 | |
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139
chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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140
preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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141
tonics
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| n.滋补品( tonic的名词复数 )；主音；奎宁水；浊音 | |
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142
brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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143
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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144
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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145
founders
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| n.创始人( founder的名词复数 ) | |
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146
eminence
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| n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家 | |
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147
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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148
nourishment
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| n.食物，营养品；营养情况 | |
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149
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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150
infusion
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| n.灌输 | |
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151
devour
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| v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷 | |
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152
marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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153
antelope
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| n.羚羊；羚羊皮 | |
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154
antelopes
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| 羚羊( antelope的名词复数 )； 羚羊皮革 | |
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155
reindeer
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| n.驯鹿 | |
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156
devoured
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| 吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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157
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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158
squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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159
acclimated
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| v.使适应新环境，使服水土服水土，适应( acclimate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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160
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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161
exhales
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| v.呼出，发散出( exhale的第三人称单数 )；吐出（肺中的空气、烟等），呼气 | |
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162
grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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163
denizen
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| n.居民，外籍居民 | |
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164
naturalist
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| n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者) | |
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165
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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166
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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167
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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168
prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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169
impervious
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| adj.不能渗透的，不能穿过的，不易伤害的 | |
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170
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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171
contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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172
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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173
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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174
impermeable
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| adj.不能透过的，不渗透的 | |
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175
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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176
dwarf
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| n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小 | |
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177
shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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178
dweller
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| n.居住者，住客 | |
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179
ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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180
perverse
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|
| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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181
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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182
contrived
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|
| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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183
dismal
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|
| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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184
dreariness
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| 沉寂，可怕，凄凉 | |
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185
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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186
compensate
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|
| vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消 | |
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187
morale
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| n.道德准则，士气，斗志 | |
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188
hospitable
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|
| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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189
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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190
turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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191
suffocated
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|
| （使某人）窒息而死( suffocate的过去式和过去分词 )； （将某人）闷死； 让人感觉闷热； 憋气 | |
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192
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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193
locusts
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| n.蝗虫( locust的名词复数 )；贪吃的人；破坏者；槐树 | |
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194
rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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195
consolidated
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| a.联合的 | |
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196
degenerate
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| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
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197
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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198
manure
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| n.粪，肥，肥粒；vt.施肥 | |
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199
superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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200
redeems
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| 补偿( redeem的第三人称单数 )； 实践； 解救； 使…免受责难 | |
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201
rusted
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| v.（使）生锈( rust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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202
pointed
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|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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203
implement
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|
| n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行 | |
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204
scriptures
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| 经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典 | |
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205
mythologies
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|
| 神话学( mythology的名词复数 )； 神话（总称）； 虚构的事实； 错误的观点 | |
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206
fens
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| n.（尤指英格兰东部的）沼泽地带( fen的名词复数 ) | |
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207
taper
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| n.小蜡烛，尖细，渐弱；adj.尖细的；v.逐渐变小 | |
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208
essentially
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|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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209
robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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210
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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211
yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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212
blight
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| n.枯萎病；造成破坏的因素；vt.破坏，摧残 | |
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213
pristine
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|
| adj.原来的，古时的，原始的，纯净的，无垢的 | |
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214
isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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215
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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216
prophesy
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| v.预言；预示 | |
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217
geologist
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| n.地质学家 | |
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218
transcend
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| vt.超出，超越(理性等)的范围 | |
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219
sublimest
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| 伟大的( sublime的最高级 )； 令人赞叹的； 极端的； 不顾后果的 | |
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220
bugle
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| n.军号，号角，喇叭；v.吹号，吹号召集 | |
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221
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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222
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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223
buffalo
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| n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛 | |
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224
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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225
bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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226
stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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227
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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228
supple
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| adj.柔软的，易弯的，逢迎的，顺从的，灵活的；vt.使柔软，使柔顺，使顺从；vi.变柔软，变柔顺 | |
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229
steers
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| n.阉公牛，肉用公牛( steer的名词复数 )v.驾驶( steer的第三人称单数 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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230
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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231
excellence
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| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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232
leopard
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| n.豹 | |
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233
ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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234
swarming
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| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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235
herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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236
affixed
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| adj.[医]附着的，附着的v.附加( affix的过去式和过去分词 )；粘贴；加以；盖（印章） | |
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237
supplanted
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| 把…排挤掉，取代( supplant的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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238
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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239
epithet
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| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
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240
melodious
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|
| adj.旋律美妙的，调子优美的，音乐性的 | |
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241
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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242
precocity
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| n.早熟，早成 | |
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243
implements
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| n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效 | |
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244
slumbered
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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245
granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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246
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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247
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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248
tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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249
diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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250
conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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251
myriad
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| adj.无数的；n.无数，极大数量 | |
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252
intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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253
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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254
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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255
impunity
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| n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
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256
oracles
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| 神示所( oracle的名词复数 )； 神谕； 圣贤； 哲人 | |
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257
binds
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| v.约束( bind的第三人称单数 )；装订；捆绑；（用长布条）缠绕 | |
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258
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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259
bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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260
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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261
muggy
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| adj.闷热的；adv.（天气）闷热而潮湿地；n.（天气）闷热而潮湿 | |
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262
farce
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| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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263
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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264
esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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265
philological
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| adj.语言学的，文献学的 | |
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266
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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267
bogs
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| n.沼泽，泥塘( bog的名词复数 )；厕所v.（使）陷入泥沼， （使）陷入困境( bog的第三人称单数 )；妨碍，阻碍 | |
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268
sloughs
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| n.沼泽( slough的名词复数 )；苦难的深渊；难以改变的不良心情；斯劳(Slough)v.使蜕下或脱落( slough的第三人称单数 )；舍弃；除掉；摒弃 | |
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269
concord
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| n.和谐；协调 | |
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270
jurisdiction
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| n.司法权，审判权，管辖权，控制权 | |
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271
aisles
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| n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
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272
hilarity
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| n.欢乐；热闹 | |
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273
serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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274
lichen
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| n.地衣, 青苔 | |
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275
lulled
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| vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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276
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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277
twig
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| n.小树枝，嫩枝；v.理解 | |
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278
poultry
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| n.家禽，禽肉 | |
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279
twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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280
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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281
brag
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| v./n.吹牛，自夸；adj.第一流的 | |
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282
muses
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的第三人称单数 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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283
fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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284
plaintiveness
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285
gush
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| v.喷，涌；滔滔不绝(说话)；n.喷，涌流；迸发 | |
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286
stratum
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| n.地层，社会阶层 | |
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287
motes
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| n.尘埃( mote的名词复数 )；斑点 | |
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288
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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289
reassure
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| v.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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290
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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291
lavishes
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| v.过分给予，滥施( lavish的第三人称单数 ) | |
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292
marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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293
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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294
stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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295
gilding
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| n.贴金箔，镀金 | |
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296
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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297
ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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298
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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299
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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