EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 129 
unsightly objects become radiant with beauty. 
There seem to be two sides of this world pre¬ 
sented to us at different times, as we see things 
in growth or dissolution, in life or death. For 
seen with the eye of a poet, as God sees them, 
all things are alive and beautiful, but seen with 
the historical eye, or the eye of memory, they 
are dead and offensive. If we see nature as 
pausing, immediately all mortifies and decays; 
but seen as progressing she is beautiful. 
I am startled that God can make me so rich 
even with my own cheap stores. It needs but 
a few wisps of straw in the sun, some small 
word dropped, or that has long lain silent in 
some book. When heaven begins and the dead 
arise no trumpet is blown. Perhaps the south 
wind will blow. 
March 13, 1853. 6 A. M., to Cliffs. There 
begins to be a greater depth of saffron in the 
morning sky. The morning and evening hori¬ 
zon fires are warmer to the eye. 
March 13,1855. P. M. To Hubbard’s Close. 
.... Coming through the stubble of Stow’s 
rye-field in front of the Breed House, I meet 
with four mice nests in going half a dozen rods. 
They lie flat on the ground amid the stubble, 
flattened spheres, the horizontal diameter about 
five inches, the perpendicular considerably less, 
composed of grass or finer stubble. On taking 
