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.
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