46 
WALDEN. 
winter of man’s discontent was thawing as well as the 
earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch 
itself. One day, when my axe had come off and I had 
cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, 
and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in 
order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into 
the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without 
inconvenience, as long as I staid there, or more than a 
quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet 
fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me 
that for a like reason men remain in their present low 
and primitive condition; but if they should feel the in¬ 
fluence of the spring of springs arousing them, they 
would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. 
I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in 
my path with portions of their bodies still numb and in¬ 
flexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of 
April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part 
of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose 
groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or 
like the spirit of the fog. 
So I went on for some days cutting and hewing tim¬ 
ber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, 
not having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, 
singing to myself, — 
Men say they know many things ; 
But lo ! they have taken wings, *— 
The arts and sciences, 
And a thousand appliances; 
The wind that blows 
Is all that any body knows. 
I hewed the main timbers six niches square, most of the 
studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor tim- 
