It all seems quite hurried, the way each season must fall forward into the next until the final freeze. “Walden” opens with him asking his neighbors whether their condition “cannot be improved” and follows up with considerable advice. Spring, summer, fall and winter — our seasons are spun into being by the earth circling the sun; the earth herself, however, is not seasonal. Taking that larger view allows Thoreau, in the second part of his fable, to reframe the cricket’s song as an “earth song,” a reminder not of life’s brevity but of eternal return. Of having no “trivial and hurried pursuits.” Of having “your engagements so few, your attention so free, your existence so mundane” that you can always hear their song.

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Persons: Thoreau, “, “ Walden ”, ” Thoreau, ”, Kouroo, Time Locations: Maine, England