Every Wound Healed

The sad memory of departed friends is soon incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as their monuments are overgrown with moss. Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides to this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death. For seen with the eye of a poet, as God sees them, all are alive and beautiful; but seen with the historical eye, or the eye of the memory, they are dead and offensive. If we see Nature as pausing, immediately all mortifies and decays; but seen as progressing, she is beautiful.

Two months after his brother John died, Thoreau watched moss and fungus grow over monuments, and wrote about grief.

Source: Henry D. Thoreau, Journal, ed. Bradford Torrey (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), Journal, vol. I (Writings, vol. VII), entry for March 13, 1842. Text: scan or ebook. Public domain in the US. Text note: The editor's footnote marker was removed. Pairs with: Pentacles: Six of Pentacles, or Major Arcana: Death or The Star A note from 2026: None needed. It fits the modern picture of fungi and mosses as the woods' first colonisers and recyclers.

Public domain in the United States.