The River Here Opened Into A
Broad And Straight Reach Of Great Length, Which We Bounded
Merrily Over Before A
Smacking breeze, with a devil-may-care look
in our faces, and our boat a white bone in its mouth,
And a speed
which greatly astonished some scow boatmen whom we met. The wind
in the horizon rolled like a flood over valley and plain, and
every tree bent to the blast, and the mountains like school-boys
turned their cheeks to it. They were great and current motions,
the flowing sail, the running stream, the waving tree, the roving
wind. The north-wind stepped readily into the harness which we
had provided, and pulled us along with good will. Sometimes we
sailed as gently and steadily as the clouds overhead, watching
the receding shores and the motions of our sail; the play of its
pulse so like our own lives, so thin and yet so full of life, so
noiseless when it labored hardest, so noisy and impatient when
least effective; now bending to some generous impulse of the
breeze, and then fluttering and flapping with a kind of human
suspense. It was the scale on which the varying temperature of
distant atmospheres was graduated, and it was some attraction for
us that the breeze it played with had been out of doors so long.
Thus we sailed, not being able to fly, but as next best, making a
long furrow in the fields of the Merrimack toward our home, with
our wings spread, but never lifting our heel from the watery
trench; gracefully ploughing homeward with our brisk and willing
team, wind and stream, pulling together, the former yet a wild
steer, yoked to his more sedate fellow.
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