Walden

felled.  In like manner the evil which one does in the interval of a
day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again
from developing themselves and destroys them.
    "After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times
from developing themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening
does not suffice to preserve them.  As soon as the breath of evening
does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man
does not differ much from that of the brute.  Men seeing the nature
of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never
possessed the innate faculty of reason.  Are those the true and
natural sentiments of man?"

   "The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger
    Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude.
    Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read
    On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear
    The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger.
    Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended
    To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world,
    And mortals knew no shores but their own.
                           . . . . . . .
    There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm
    Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed."

    On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the
river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking
grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular
rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play
with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very slight and
graceful hawk, like a nighthawk, alternately soaring like a ripple
and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the under side of
its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the
pearly inside of a shell.  This sight reminded me of falconry and
what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport.  The
Merlin it seemed to me it might be called: but I care not for its
name.  It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed.  It did
not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks,
but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting
again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and
beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then
recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot
on terra firma.  It appeared to have no companion in the universe --
sporting there alone -- and to need none but the morning and the
ether with which it played.  It was not lonely, but made all the
earth lonely beneath it.  Where was the parent which hatched it, its
kindred, and its father in the heavens?  The tenant of the air, it
seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the
crevice of a crag; -- or was its native nest made in the angle of a
cloud, woven of the rainbow's trimmings and the sunset sky, and
lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth?  Its eyry
now some cliffy cloud.
    Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and bright
cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of jewels.  Ah! I have
penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring
day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow
root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so
pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had
been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose.  There needs no
stronger proof of immortality.  All things must live in such a
light.  O Death, where was thy sting?  O Grave, where was thy
victory, then?
    Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the
unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.  We need the tonic
of wildness -- to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and
the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the
whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl
builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the
ground.  At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn
all things, we require that all things be mysterious and
unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and
unfathomed by us because unfathomable.  We can never have enough of
nature.  We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor,
vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the
wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the
thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces
freshets.  We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some
life pasturing freely where we never wander.  We are cheered when we
observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and
disheartens us, and deriving health and strength from the repast.
There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which
compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night
when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong
appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for
this.  I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads
can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one
another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out
of existence like pulp -- tadpoles which herons gobble up, and
tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has
rained flesh and blood!  With the liability to accident, we must see
how little account is to be made of it.  The impression made on a
wise man is that of universal innocence.  Poison is not poisonous
after all, nor are any wounds fatal.  Compassion is a very untenable
ground.  It must be expeditious.  Its pleadings will not bear to be
stereotyped.
    Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just
putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a
brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy
days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly
on the hillsides here and there.  On the third or fourth of May I
saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I