There were
times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to
any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.
Sometimes,
in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway
from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and
sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or
flitted noiseless though the house, until by the sun falling in at my west
window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was
reminded of the lapse of time.
I grew in
those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of
the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so
much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by
contemplation and the forsaking of works.
For the most
part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some
work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable
is accomplished. Instead of singing, like the birds, I silently smiled at my
incessant good fortune.
As the
sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so I had my
chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest.
-Thoreau, Walden
