how do thoreaus expectations of morning echo his expectations of life in general?

A "worshipper of Aurora," Thoreau rises at dawn and swims in the pond. The morning reminds him of heroic ages and encourages him to truly awaken. He attributes men's lack of intellectual exertion and poetic or divine life to "drowsiness" that few can shake. "To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake." Thoreau believes we should endeavor to be awake because in doing so, we can create the "atmosphere ... through which we look" and make life beautiful.

"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint burn of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sailing with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night."