before,--
so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about
the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly
should never have seen them. But, above all, I discovered around me,--it
was near the end of June,--on the ends of the topmost branches only, a
few minute and delicate red cone-like blossoms, the fertile flower of
the white pine looking heavenward. I carried straightway to the village
the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the
streets,--for it was court-week,--and to farmers and lumber-dealers and
wood-choppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen the like before,
but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell of ancient architects
finishing their works on the tops of columns as perfectly as on the
lower and more visible parts! Nature has from the first expanded the
minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads
and unobserved by them. We see only the flowers that are under our feet
in the meadows. The pines have developed their delicate blossoms on the
highest twigs of the wood every summer for ages, as well over the heads
of Nature's red children as of her white ones; yet scarcely a farmer or
hunter in the land has ever seen them.

Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed
over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering
the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard
within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that
we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of
thought. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours.
There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,--the
gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up
early, and kept up early, and to be where he is is to be in season,
in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and
soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,--healthiness as of a
spring burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last
instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who
has not betrayed his master many times since last he heard that note?

The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all
plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter,
but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in
doleful dumps, breaking the awful