340 
WALDEN. 
me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Na¬ 
ture was my compensation for this. I love to see that 
Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded 
to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; 
that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed 
out of existence like pulp, — tadpoles which herons gob¬ 
ble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; 
and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With 
the liability to accident, we must see how little account 
is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise 
man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poi¬ 
sonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion 
i3 a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. 
Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped. 
Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other 
trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around 
the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the 
landscape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were 
breaking through mists and shining faintly on the 
hill-sides here and there. On the third or fourth 
of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the 
first week of the month I heard the whippoorwill, 
the brown-thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, the che- 
wink, and other birds. I had heard the wood-thrush 
long before. The phoebe had already come once more 
and looked in at my door and window, to see if my 
house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself 
on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by 
the air, while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur¬ 
like pollen of the pitch-pine soon covered the pond and 
the stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you 
could have collected a barrel-ful. This is the 66 sulphur 
showers ” we hear of. Even in Calidas’ drama of Sa- 
