Image 98 of Theo Brown Diaries, 1948

Brown, Theophilus

Generic Work

Image 98 of Theo Brown Diaries, 1948

Public Deposited

about 60° today MONDAY MARCH 15 1948 Coal strike or rather John Lewis suggests the coal miners stop work which most of them do. ~~~~~~~~~ never had this present world a truer lover. How could another offer anything better?" By and by you shall spend these great days in walking toward some celestial Holden, and sit on celestial hill-tops on the way and hear celestial bobo- links, song sparrows, larks, etc. I hope they will be as good as these earthly ones." He sighs at the theological imagery of a world where "Everlasting spring abides, And never withering flowers," and would fain plead with bounteous heaven to throw in on occasional October, with it's fringed gentians and dropping leaves - with November omitted. One August day he sits on a hill near Quinsigamond and tries in vain to read Wordsworth's "Excursion": what are "words worth" when the milkweed, clematis, sumach, and poke weed beckon his soul out of him? He believes in such "stock" as the blue jay and chicka- dee, though his dividends are too infrequent; he thinks his property in wild geese less likely to take wings and fly away than that in his house and store; the dewy blossoms and singing birds are the best crop his pear tree can yield: and he grieves not that the cherry tree is to bear no fruit, but that it is to show no flowers. The small talk of his party beside the sea at nightfall grows sacred as he thinks of that great deep on which we are all forever afloat. The large yellow moon, new risen, looks him into a thoughtful mood and brings before his mind's eye half a planet, "with thousands of miles of lonely sea coast flashing in the golden light." And, as he strolls to Long Pond, how much he sees going on in a thistle! "A splendid large butterfly has been steadily piercing with long probocis into the heart of the flower, nearly an hour; bumble-bees shoot in like bullets close by him, but there is no quarreling. They work as though they were in a great hurry. I left the butterfly working on the thistle." toward all the lower creatures his heart is always tender. He pities the birds overtaken by a wild April snow-storm and wonders how their stiffening limbs will cling to the (over)

Creator