Its masses of light green
foliage, piled one upon another to the height of twenty or thirty
feet, seemed to float on the surface of the water, while the
slight gray stems and the shore were hardly visible between
them. No tree is so wedded to the water, and harmonizes so well
with still streams. It is even more graceful than the weeping
willow, or any pendulous trees, which dip their branches in the
stream instead of being buoyed up by it. Its limbs curved outward
over the surface as if attracted by it. It had not a New England
but an Oriental character, reminding us of trim Persian gardens,
of Haroun Alraschid, and the artificial lakes of the East.
As we thus dipped our way along between fresh masses of foliage
overrun with the grape and smaller flowering vines, the surface
was so calm, and both air and water so transparent, that the
flight of a kingfisher or robin over the river was as distinctly
seen reflected in the water below as in the air above. The birds
seemed to flit through submerged groves, alighting on the
yielding sprays, and their clear notes to come up from below. We
were uncertain whether the water floated the land, or the land
held the water in its bosom. It was such a season, in short, as
that in which one of our Concord poets sailed on its stream, and
sung its quiet glories.
"There is an inward voice, that in the stream
Sends forth its spirit to the listening ear,
And in a calm content it floweth on,
Like wisdom, welcome with its own respect.
Clear in its breast lie all these beauteous thoughts,
It doth receive the green and graceful trees,
And the gray rocks smile in its peaceful arms."
And more he sung, but too serious for our page. For every oak and
birch too growing on the hill-top, as well as for these elms and
willows, we knew that there was a graceful ethereal and ideal
tree making down from the roots, and sometimes Nature in high
tides brings her mirror to its foot and makes it visible. The
stillness was intense and almost conscious, as if it were a
natural Sabbath, and we fancied that the morning was the evening
of a celestial day. The air was so elastic and crystalline that
it had the same effect on the landscape that a glass has on a
picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and perfection. The
landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the
woods and fences checkered and partitioned it with new
regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretched away with
lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely
distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang over
fairy-land. The world seemed decked for some holiday or prouder
pageantry, with silken streamers flying, and the course of our
lives to wind on before us like a green lane into a country maze,
at the season when fruit-trees are in blossom.
Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus
fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They
should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive
to behold as objects in the desert, a broken shaft or crumbling
mound against a limitless horizon. Character always secures for
itself this advantage, and is thus distinct and unrelated to near
or trivial objects, whether things or persons. On this same
stream a maiden once sailed in my boat, thus unattended but by
invisible guardians, and as she sat in the prow there was nothing
but herself between the steersman and the sky. I could then say
with the poet, -
"Sweet falls the summer air
Over her frame who sails with me;
Her way like that is beautifully free,
Her nature far more rare,
And is her constant heart of virgin purity."
At evening still the very stars seem but this maiden's emissaries
and reporters of her progress.
Low in the eastern sky
Is set thy glancing eye;
And though its gracious light
Ne'er riseth to my sight,
Yet every star that climbs
Above the gnarled limbs
Of yonder hill,
Conveys thy gentle will.
Believe I knew thy thought,
And that the zephyrs brought
Thy kindest wishes through,
As mine they bear to you,
That some attentive cloud
Did pause amid the crowd
Over my head,
While gentle things were said.
Believe the thrushes sung,
And that the flower-bells rung,
That herbs exhaled their scent,
And beasts knew what was meant,
The trees a welcome waved,
And lakes their margins laved,
When thy free mind
To my retreat did wind.
It was a summer eve,
The air did gently heave
While yet a low-hung cloud
Thy eastern skies did shroud;
The lightning's silent gleam,
Startling my drowsy dream,
Seemed like the flash
Under thy dark eyelash.
Still will I strive to be
As if thou wert with me;
Whatever path I take,
It shall be for thy sake,
Of gentle slope and wide,
As thou wert by my side,
Without a root
To trip thy gentle foot.
I 'll walk with gentle pace,
And choose the smoothest place
And careful dip the oar,
And shun the winding shore,
And gently steer my boat
Where water-lilies float,
And cardinal flowers
Stand in their sylvan bowers.
It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the
mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade
of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for
art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.
