The happiest days
become the saddest afterwards; let us never go back, lest we too die.
There are no
Such oaks anywhere else, none so tall and straight, and with
such massive heads, on which the sun used to shine as if on the globe of
the earth, one side in shadow, the other in bright light. How often I
have looked at oaks since, and yet have never been able to get the same
effect from them! Like an old author printed in another type, the words
are the same, but the sentiment is different. The brooks have ceased to
run. There is no music now at the old hatch where we used to sit in
danger of our lives, happy as kings, on the narrow bar over the deep
water. The barred pike that used to come up in such numbers are no more
among the flags. The perch used to drift down the stream, and then bring
up again. The sun shone there for a very long time, and the water rippled
and sang, and it always seemed to me that I could feel the rippling and
the singing and the sparkling back through the centuries. The brook is
dead, for when man goes nature ends. I dare say there is water there
still, but it is not the brook; the brook is gone like John Brown's soul.
There used to be clouds over the fields, white clouds in blue summer
skies.
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