Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but... the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain, bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to catch pickerel ... appeared f...or an instant trivial to me who had been sent to school and college; but as I ran down the hill toward the reddening west ... my Good Genius seemed to say,--Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day,--farther and wider,--and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee other lakes, and night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played. Grow wild according to thy nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still the east end. A gr...eat field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore,--olit, olit, olit,--chip, chip, chip, che char,--che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore,--a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden is dead and is alive again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my fare for variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of necessity th...at the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I went to the woods. Not that I am less humane than others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This was habit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »