of May I saw a loon in the pond, and
during the first week of the month I heard the whip-poor-will, the brown
thrasher, the veery, the wood pewee, the chewink, 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 barrelful. This is the "sulphur showers" we bear of. Even in Calidas'
drama of Sacontala, we read of "rills dyed yellow with the golden dust
of the lotus." And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one
rambles into higher and higher grass.

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second
year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.

Conclusion

To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery.
Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The buckeye does not grow in
New England, and the mockingbird is rarely heard here. The wild goose
is more of a cosmopolite than we; he breaks his fast in Canada, takes
a luncheon in the Ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern
bayou. Even the bison, to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons
cropping the pastures of the Colorado only till a greener and sweeter
grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet we think that if rail fences
are pulled down, and stone walls piled up on our farms, bounds are
henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen
town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer: but
you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is
wider than our views of it.

Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious
passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum.
The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our
voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for
diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to southern Africa to chase the
giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long,
pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also
may afford rare sport; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot
one's self.-