Instructions for a Summer Morning

This by Henry David Thoreau, yes, he of Walden Pond, from "Life Prayers," edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon.

There were times when I could not afford
to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment
to any work, whether of head or hands.
Sometimes, in a summer morning,
having taken my accustomed bath,
I sat in my sunny doorway
from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie,
amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness,
while the birds sang around.
I grew in those seasons
like corn in the night,
and they were far better
than any work of the hands would have been.
They were not time substracted from my life,
but so much over and above my usual allowance.