In spite of – or maybe because of – the snowy white winter scene that surrounds me, I feel a need to praise spring. In light of this last (it had better be) blast of winter, here are some words from the Unitarian Henry Thoreau, from Walden:
Everyone has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the [wood] of an old table … which had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts, ––from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still … [The bug] was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn.
Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection … strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb, ––heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board, ––may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society’s most trivial … furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!
All hail the beautiful and winged life that stirs in us today, in springtime.
No comments:
Post a Comment