EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 47 
town meetings and elections, as well here as in 
Troy neighborhood. 
March 3, 1839. The poet must be some¬ 
thing more than natural, even supernatural. 
Nature will not speak through him, but along 
with him. His voice will not proceed from her 
midst, but, breathing on her, will make her the 
expression of his thought. He then poetizes 
when he takes a fact out of nature into spirit. 
He speaks without reference to time or place. 
His thought is one world, hers, another. He is 
another nature, nature’s brother. 
March 3, 1841. I hear a man blowing a 
horn this still evening, and it sounds like the 
plaint of nature in these times. In this which 
I refer to some man there is something greater 
than any man. It is as if the earth spoke. It 
adds a great remoteness to the horizon, and its 
very distance is grand, as when one draws back 
the head to speak. That which I now hear in 
the west seems like an invitation to the east. 
It runs round the earth as round a whisper¬ 
ing gallery. All things great seem transpiring 
where this sound comes from. It is friendly as 
a distant hermit’s taper. When it trills or un¬ 
dulates, the heavens are crumpled into time, 
and successive waves flow across them. It is a 
strangely healthy sound for these disjointed 
times. It is a rare soundness when cow-bells 
