There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the
bloom
of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. 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 revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed
solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted
noiseless
through 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 had I my chuckle or
suppressed
warble which he might hear out of my nest.from , by Henry David Thoreau
Walden
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