Question

What moood is established by thoreaus description of the pond ?

Answer 1

The mood created is a love of the natural beauty found in the world.  Transcendentalism, a movement strongly associated with Thoreau, possessed several fundamental beliefs.  One such notion was the idea that the natural world created its own unique beauty which could only be fully appreciated with the immediate sensation of experience. In the passage, Thoreau is identifying this experience of seeing the morning break on the pond and the natural sensations around him.  The description of dew and the "throwing off the nightly clothing of mist" helps to illuminate this experience. Highly emotional, Thoreau uses his own physical and mental experience of sensation and sensory images to help grasp the beauty of nature, as opposed to a scientific and detached analysis.