Concord Days. Amos Bronson Alcott

Is it imaginable that he conceives his piece as a whole, and then sits down to execute his task at a heat? Is not this imaginable rather, and the key to the construction of his works? Living for composition as few authors can, and holding company, studies, sleep, exercise, affairs, subservient to thought, his products are gathered as they ripen, stored in his commonplaces; their contents transcribed at intervals, and classified. It is the order of ideas, of imagination observed in the arrangement, not of logical sequence. You may begin at the last paragraph and read backwards. 'Tis Iris-built. Each period is self-poised; there may be a chasm of years between the opening passage and the last written, and there is endless time in the composition. Jewels all! Separate stars. You may have them in a galaxy, if you like, or view them separate and apart. But every one finds that, if he take an essay, or verses, however the writer may have pleased himself with the cunning workmanship, 'tis cloud-fashioned, and a blind pathway for any one else. Cross as you can, or not cross, it matters not, you may climb or leap, move in circles, turn somersaults;

      "In sympathetic sorrow sweep the ground,"

      like his swallow in Hermione. Dissolving views, prospects, vistas opening wide and far, yet earth, sky—realities all, not illusions. Here is substance, sod, sun; much fair weather in the seer as in his leaves. The whole quaternion of the seasons, the sidereal year, has been poured into these periods. Afternoon walks furnished their perspectives, rounded and melodized them. These good things have been talked and slept over, meditated standing and sitting, read and polished in the utterance, submitted to all various tests, and, so accepted, they pass into print. Light fancies, dreams, moods, refrains, were set on foot, and sent jaunting about the fields, along wood-paths, by Walden shores, by hill and brook-sides, to come home and claim their rank and honors too in his pages. Composed of surrounding matters, populous with thoughts, brisk with images, these books are wholesome, homelike, and could have been written only in New England, and by our poet.

      "Because I was content with these poor fields,

      Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams,

      And found a home in haunts which others scorned,

      The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,

      And granted me the freedom of their state,

      And in their secret senate have prevailed

      With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life,

      Made moon and planets parties to their bond,

      And through my rock-like, solitary wont

      Shot million rays of thought and tenderness.

      For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring

      Visits the valley;—break away the clouds—

      I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air,

      And loiter willing by yon loitering stream.

      Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird,

      Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree,

      Courageous, sing a delicate overture

      To lead the tardy concert of the year.

      Onward and nearer rides the sun of May;

      And wide around, the marriage of the plants

      Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain

      The surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag,

      Hollow and lake, hill-side, and pine arcade,

      Are touched with Genius. Yonder ragged cliff

      Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.

      … The gentle deities

      Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds,

      The innumerable tenements of beauty,

      The miracle of generative force,

      Far-reaching concords of astronomy

      Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds;

      Better, the linked purpose of the whole,

      And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty

      In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave.

      The polite found me impolite; the great

      Would mortify me, but in vain; for still

      I am a willow of the wilderness,

      Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts

      My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk,

      A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush,

      A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine,

      Salve my worst wounds.

      For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear:

      'Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent lie?

      Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass

      Into the winter night's extinguished mood?

      Canst thou shine now, then darkle,

      And being latent feel thyself no less?

      As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye,

      The river, hill, stems, foliage, are obscure,

      Yet envies none, none are unenviable.'"

      I know of but one subtraction from the pleasure the reading of his books—shall I say his conversation?—gives me—his pains to be impersonal or discrete, as if he feared any the least intrusion of himself were an offence offered to self-respect, the courtesy due to intercourse and authorship; thus depriving his page, his company, of attractions the great masters of both knew how to insinuate into their text and talk without overstepping the bounds of social or literary decorum. What is more delightful than personal magnetism? 'Tis the charm of good fellowship as of good writing. To get and to give the largest measure of satisfaction, to fill ourselves with the nectar of select experiences, not without some intertinctures of egotism so charming in a companion, is what we seek in books of the class of his, as in their authors. We associate diffidence properly with learning, frankness with fellowship, and owe a certain blushing reverence to both. For though our companion be a bashful man—and he is the worse if wanting this grace—we yet wish him to be an enthusiast behind all reserves, and capable of abandonment sometimes in his books. I know how rare this genial humor is, this frankness of the blood, and how surpassing are the gifts of good spirits, especially here in cold New England, where, for the most part,

      "Our virtues grow

      Beneath our humors, and at seasons show."

      And yet, under our east winds of reserve, there hides an obscure courtesy in the best natures, which neither temperament nor breeding can spoil. Sometimes manners the most distant are friendly foils for holding eager dispositions subject to the measures of right behavior. 'Tis not every New-Englander that dares venture upon the frankness, the plain speaking, commended by the Greek poet.

      "Caress me not with words, while far away

      Thy heart is absent, and thy feelings stray;

      But if thou love me with a faithful breast,

      Be that pure love with zeal sincere exprest;

      And if thou hate, the bold aversion show

      With open face avowed, and known my foe."

      Fortunate the visitor who is admitted of a morning for the high discourse, or permitted to join the poet in his afternoon walks to Walden, the cliffs, or elsewhere—hours likely to be remembered as unlike any others in his calendar of experiences. I may say for me they have made ideas possible by hospitalities given to a fellowship so enjoyable. Shall I describe them as sallies oftenest into the cloud-lands, into scenes and intimacies ever new, none the less novel or remote