Recording intelligenceAI-generated brief · check the source for context

Sounds of Nature

50:24 recording · EN · 1 speaker

Listen to the original

Brief overview

At Walden the speaker listens instead of reading: railroad clamour and wild sounds both teach attention.

  1. Looking always at what is to be seenNo course of history, philosophy or poetry compares with the discipline of being forever on the alert.
  2. Idle mornings were added to his lifeHours spent in reverie were not time subtracted from his life but so much over and above his usual allowance.
  3. The railroad became the village clockThe cars come with such regularity that farmers set their clocks by the whistle, and one institution regulates a whole country.
Executive Summary AI
  • Opening "Chapter IV. Sounds," the speaker warns that confinement to books, even select and classic ones, makes us forget the language all things and events speak without metaphor, and asks whether you will be a reader, a student merely, or a seer.
  • He confesses he did not read books his first summer but hoed beans, and sat whole summer mornings in reverie amid the pines, hickories and sumacs until the sun in his west window and a traveller's wagon reminded him of the lapse of time, growing in those seasons like corn in the night.
  • He describes the house itself: on a hillside half a dozen rods from the pond, with sand-cherry (Cerasus pumila) flowering near the end of May and sumac (Rhus glabra) grown six feet the first season, its boughs an inch in diameter breaking off by their own weight.
  • The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of his house, freight men bow to him as an employee, timber goes twenty miles an hour against the city's walls, and the cars' startings and arrivals have become the epochs of the village day, so that farmers set their clocks by the whistle.
  • Once the cars are gone he is more alone than ever, and the recording closes on sounds he does keep: Sunday bells from Lincoln, Acton, Bedford or Concord, whippoorwills chanting regularly at half-past seven, screech-owls, bullfrogs at their festal tables, no cockerel, and unfenced nature reaching up to his very sills.
Key Quote
“Much is published, but little printed.”
— Narrator
Key Quote
“Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?”
— Narrator
Key Quote
“I did not read books the first summer.”
— Narrator

Transcript

0:00 CHAPTER IV.
0:27 SOUNDS.
0:30 But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only
0:37 particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger
0:43 of forgetting the language which all things and events speak
0:46 without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard.
0:53 Much is published, but little printed.
0:58 The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter
1:03 is wholly removed.
1:06 No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert.
1:14 What is a course of history or philosophy or poetry, no matter how well selected,
1:19 or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life compared with the discipline of looking
1:26 always at what is to be seen.
1:30 Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
1:36 Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.
1:43 I did not read books the first summer.
1:48 I hoed beans.
1:51 Nay, I often did better than this.
1:54 There were times when I could not afford
1:57 to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment
2:00 to any work, whether of the head or hands.
2:09 I love a broad margin to my life.
2:31 Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I wrapped in a reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumacs,
2:42 in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window,
2:49 with the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the
2:54 lapse of time.
2:58 I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands
3:09 would have been.
3:12 They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works.
3:35 For the most part, I minded not how the hours went.
3:41 The day advanced as if to light some work of mine it was morning and lo now it is evening and nothing memorable is accomplished Like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.
4:08 As the sparrow had its trill sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle
4:16 or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the weak, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor
4:33 were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock. For I lived like the puri indians of whom it is said that for yesterday to-day and to-morrow they have only one word the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard i should not have been found wanting in himself it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
5:33 I had this advantage at least in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for
5:40 amusement to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement, and
5:49 never ceased to be novel.
5:52 It was a drama of many scenes, and without an end.
5:58 If we were always, indeed, getting our living and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned we should never be troubled with ennui
6:12 follow your genius closely enough and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.

Showing the first 40 of 290 lines.