Within the circuit of this plodding life <br />There enter moments of an azure hue, <br />Untarnished fair as is the violet <br />Or anemone, when the spring strews them <br />By some meandering rivulet, which make <br />The best philosophy untrue that aims <br />But to console man for his grievances <br />I have remembered when the winter came, <br />High in my chamber in the frosty nights, <br />When in the still light of the cheerful moon, <br />On every twig and rail and jutting spout, <br />The icy spears were adding to their length <br />Against the arrows of the coming sun, <br />How in the shimmering noon of summer past <br />Some unrecorded beam slanted across <br />The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew; <br />Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind, <br />The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag <br />Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill, <br />Which now through all its course stands still and dumb <br />Its own memorial,—purling at its play <br />Along the slopes, and through the meadows next, <br />Until its youthful sound was hushed at last <br />In the staid current of the lowland stream; <br />Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned, <br />And where the fieldfare followed in the rear, <br />When all the fields around lay bound and hoar <br />Beneath a thick integument of snow. <br />So by God's cheap economy made rich <br />To go upon my winter's task again.<br /><br />Henry David Thoreau<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/within-the-circuit-of-this-plodding-life/
