瓦爾登湖原文

1、/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/walden/chapter02.html chapter ii: where ilived,and what ilived forat a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. ihave thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of

2、 where ilive. inimagination ihave bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and iknew their price. iwalked over each farmers premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a

3、higher price on it, - took everything but a deed of it, - took his word for his deed, for idearly love to talk, - cultivatedit, and him too to some extent, itrust, and withdrew when ihad enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. this experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-

4、estate broker by my friends. wherever isat, there imight live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. what is a house but a sedes, a seat? - better if a country seat. idiscovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village,

5、but to my eyes the village was too far from it. well, there imight live, isaid; and there idid live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how icould let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. thefuture inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place the

6、ir houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. anafternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard woodlot and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then ilet it lie, fa

7、llow perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. my imagination carried me so far that ieven had the refusal of several farms, - therefusal was all iwanted,- but inever got my fingers burned by actual possession. thenearest that icame to actua

8、l possession was when ibought the hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife - every man has such a wife - changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he off

9、ered me ten dollars to release him. now, to speak the truth, ihad but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if iwas that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. however, ilet him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for ihad carried it f

10、ar enough; or rather, to be generous, isold him the farm for just what igave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. ifound thus that ihad been a rich man without any damage to my poverty.

11、butiretained the landscape, and ihave since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheel barrow. with respect to landscapes,- iam monarch of all isurvey,my right there is none to dispute.ihave frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty

12、farmer supposed that he had got a few wildapples only. why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk. t

13、he real attractions of the hollowell farm, to me, were; its complete retirement, being about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the

14、 spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors ishould have; but abov

15、e all, the recollection ihad of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which iheard the house-dog bark. iwas in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and

16、 grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made any more of his improvements. toenjoy these advantages iwas ready to carry it on; likeatlas, to take the world on my shoulders,- inever heard what compensation he received for that, - and do all those things w

17、hich had no other motive or excuse but that imight pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for iknew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind iwanted if icould only afford to let it alone. butit turned out as ihave said. all that icould say, then, with respec

18、t to farming on a large scale, (i have always cultivated a garden,) was. that ihad had my seeds ready. many think that seeds improve with age. ihave no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last ishall plant, ishall be less likely to be disappointed. butiwould say t

19、o my fellows, once for all, as long as possible livefree and uncommitted. itmakes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail. oldcato, whose dere rustic is my cultivator, says, and the only translation ihave seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage, whenyou think of

20、 getting a farm, turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look atit, and do not think it enough to go round itonce. theoftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good. ithink ishall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as ilive, and be bu

21、ried in it first, that it may please me the more atlast. the present was my next experiment of this kind, which ipurpose to describe more at length; for convenience, putting the experience of two years into one. asi have said, ido not propose to write an ode to dejection, butto brag as lustily as ch

22、anticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, ifonly to wake my neighbors up. when first itook up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, byaccident, was on independence day, or the fourth of july, i845, my house was not finished for winter, but was

23、merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. theupright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its

24、timbers were saturated with dew, so that ifancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. tomy imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which ihad visited the year before. this was an airy and unplaste

25、red cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. thewinds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. themorning wind forever blows, the poem of cr

26、eation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. olympusis but theoutside of the earth every where. the only house ihad been the owner of before, if iexcept aboat, was a tent, which iused occasionally when making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; butthe b

27、oat, after passing from hand to hand, hasgone down the stream of time. with this more substantial shelter about me, ihad made some progress toward settling in the world. thisframe, so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. itwas suggestive somewhat as a p

28、icture in outlines. idid not need to go out doors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. itwas not so much within doors as behind a door where isat, even in the rainiest weather. theharivansa says, an abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning. such was

29、not my abode, for ifound my self suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. iwas not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or r

30、arely, serenade a villager, - the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many others. iwas seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south of the village of concord and somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive wood betwee

31、n that town and lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, concord battle ground; but iwas so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my most distant horizon. for the first week, whenever ilooked out on the pond i

32、t impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, isaw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, li

33、ke ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. thevery dew seemed to hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, ason the sides of mountains. this small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a g

34、entle rain storm in august, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood-thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. alake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air

35、 above it being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. from a hill top near by, where the wood had been recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in t

36、he hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. that way ilooked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged

37、 with blue. indeed, by standing on tiptoe icould catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the north-west, those true-blue coins from heavens own mint, and also of some portion of the village. butin other directions, even from this point, icould not

38、see over or beyond the woods which surrounded me. itis well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. one value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you see that earthis not continent but insular. this is as important as that it keeps butte

39、r cool. when ilooked across the pond from this peak toward the sudbury meadows, which in time of flood idistinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a coinin abasin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet o

40、f intervening water, and iwas reminded that this on which idwelt was but dry land. though the view from my door was still more contracted, idid not feel crowded or confined in the least. there was pasture enough for my imagination. thelow shrub-oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose, stretched away toward the prairies of the west and the step