A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Pennsylvania State ...

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farmer will take? When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet. There is a pleasant tract on the bank of the Concord, called Conantum, which I have in my mind;— the old deserted farm-house, the desolate pasture with its bleak cliff, the open wood, the river-reach, the green meadow in the midst, and the moss-grown wild-apple orchard,— places where one may have many thoughts and not decide anything. It is a scene which I can not only remember, as I might a vision, but when I will can bodily revisit, and find it even so, unaccountable, yet unpretending in its pleasant dreariness. When my thoughts are sensible of change, I love to see and sit on rocks which I have known, and pry into their moss, and see unchangeableness so established. I not yet gray on rocks forever gray, I no longer green under the evergreens. There is something even in the lapse of time by which time recovers itself. As we have said, it proved a cool as well as breezy day, and by the time we reached Penichook Brook we were obliged to A <strong>Week</strong> on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers 274 sit muffled in our cloaks, while the wind and current carried us along. We bounded swiftly over the rippling surface, far by many cultivated lands and the ends of fences which divided innumerable farms, with hardly a thought for the various lives which they separated; now by long rows of alders or groves of pines or oaks, and now by some homestead where the women and children stood outside to gaze at us, till we had swept out of their sight, and beyond the limit of their longest Saturday ramble. We glided past the mouth of the Nashua, and not long after, of Salmon Brook, without more pause than the wind. Salmon Brook, Penichook, Ye sweet waters of my brain, When shall I look, Or cast the hook, In your waves again? Silver eels, Wooden creels,
These the baits that still allure, And dragon-fly That floated by, May they still endure? The shadows chased one another swiftly over wood and meadow, and their alternation harmonized with our mood. We could distinguish the clouds which cast each one, though never so high in the heavens. When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul, where is the substance? Probably, if we were wise enough, we should see to what virtue we are indebted for any happier moment we enjoy. No doubt we have earned it at some time; for the gifts of Heaven are never quite gratuitous. The constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future growth. The wood which we now mature, when it becomes virgin mould, determines the character of our second growth, whether that be oaks or pines. Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?—But, referred to the sun, Henry David Thoreau 275 it is widest at its base, which is no greater than his own opacity. The divine light is diffused almost entirely around us, and by means of the refraction of light, or else by a certain self-luminousness, or, as some will have it, transparency, if we preserve ourselves untarnished, we are able to enlighten our shaded side. At any rate, our darkest grief has that bronze color of the moon eclipsed. There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it. Shadows, referred to the source of light, are pyramids whose bases are never greater than those of the substances which cast them, but light is a spherical congeries of pyramids, whose very apexes are the sun itself, and hence the system shines with uninterrupted light. But if the light we use is but a paltry and narrow taper, most objects will cast a shadow wider than themselves. The places where we had stopped or spent the night in our way up the river, had already acquired a slight historical interest for us; for many upward day’s voyaging were unravelled in this rapid downward passage. When one landed to stretch his limbs by walking, he soon found himself falling behind his companion, and was obliged to take advantage of the
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A Week on the Conc
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A Week on the Conc
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He confined the rivers within their
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ound to their wood-lots and upland
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Concord, as exhibited in the Revolu
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The Mississippi, the Ganges, and th
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and divide the air and water best.
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With such thoughts we swept gently
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head, Chelone glabra, grew close to
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founded by many knowledges, and has
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cies, though the inexperienced woul
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differently past. It rather prefers
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ting their mouths for half an hour
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Bridge. Their captain, a man of pis
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no electric shock, but mere Shad, a
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ods from the shore, we sat looking
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SUNDA SUNDAY SUNDA IN THE MORNING t
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and makes it visible. The stillness
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And shun the winding shore, And gen
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Its metal is not of brass, But air,
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little humor but genuine; a laborin
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The Indian’s intercourse with Nat
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concerned about the historical trut
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sun’s rays. The matutine intellec
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Jonas Parker, both of Shirley. They
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One memorable addition to the old m
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And my own descendants. I cannot to
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worry my neighbors with the new sen
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I say, Turn it out doors, Into the
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words might perhaps strike root and
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sented with the freedom of the Merr
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their departure; so they took leave
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vicinity of the ocean. Between the
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Winnipiseogee, was first surveyed i
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or beside their design, not anticip
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“They, thinking great things, upo
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the common arts of life, are his wo
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the arches of science can never spa
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gelid Hyperboreans glow, and the ol
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stream, which flows as much to sun
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ing? Learn to split wood, at least.
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There is a sort of homely truth and
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ans belonging to Narragansett, Long
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learned. We could not help being st
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with us. But the other happily pass
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fire and got breakfast ready. At an
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or the fifteenth, or the thirtieth
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seemed so new, and no house was obs
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sia, and Hindostan, the lands of co
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tion. It is the slowest pulsation w
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ety derives its origin still from t
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and in this life, as we may, withou
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not been effectual? “Assuredly,
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the tortoise, he can draw in all hi
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night of time. The contemplative Mo
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its sail set, glided round a point
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have fished before the whites arriv
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ments for thousands of years, so im
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were held by any. We can tolerate a
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membered. Its story has indeed had
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the poet sings:— “Fragments of
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that the silver eel was formerly ab
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Ye distant nursery of rills, Monadn
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By venturous spirit driven Under th
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Many a brave and noble captain Floa
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epitaph. Here lies an honest man, R
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tinkling ever-busy laboratory it wa
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former state of existence.” As po
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From either end of Heaven the welki
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TUESDA TUESDA TUESDAY TUESDA LONG B
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they had landed, and across the spa
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I had one fair view of the country
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and not unwisely improving this ele
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“Anon permit the basest clouds to
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ible, that you at first suppose the
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spread out broader, with an uninhab
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about, from which a sum of money wa
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to come to fresh water; and you are
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ing the former, and of the same cha
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ter pasturage anywhere.” I then a
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In comelye curles did wave; And on
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mile or two, and now shut in by a s
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pense of repairing them, and so in
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(Ovid, Met. I. 133.) We thought tha
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too much to literature. The unlearn
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without “brecking” our “conow
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Heaven allows. “Too quick resolve
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Distracting cares will not be allow
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TO A DOVE Lovely dove, Whence, when
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TO A SWALLOW What dost thou wish me
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uds of spring and the seared leaves
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WEDNESDA WEDNESDAY WEDNESDA “Man
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market for their wood, and when the
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past the Hook, quite to the ocean s
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depths of a quiet nature, has trave
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and is still bringing it down or wa
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above the present level of the wate
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Some minds are as little logical or
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used all his arts to destroy them,
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ut seen from there is too ethereall
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out shuffling. Their sails, which s
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Yet now am forced to know, though h
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Be fair, be fertile evermore, Ye ru
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goes forth prepared to say, “Swee
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any truer and nobler relation possi
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to what interests himself. Men and
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say Farewell; that you could easily
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fragmentary and godlike intercourse
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is word and deed. If they know not
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use you as a hammer, and drive a na
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will fell an oak with a firebrand,
Page 223 and 224: My most serene and irresponsible ne
Page 225 and 226: Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns,
Page 227 and 228: to his stock. We had come away up h
Page 229 and 230: incurred. I heard that an engagemen
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Page 233 and 234: THURSDA THURSDAY THURSDA “He trod
Page 235 and 236: fresh Attic salt of the moss-beds.
Page 237 and 238: the village of Hooksett on the shor
Page 239 and 240: When you come to a brook or pond, y
Page 241 and 242: sound, like a man stepping on the r
Page 243 and 244: transparent as light. In the third
Page 245 and 246: wild pigeon sat secure above our he
Page 247 and 248: tion has wrought but little change
Page 249 and 250: perfect specimens in front-yard plo
Page 251 and 252: miles above where we now are, she h
Page 253 and 254: English standard, nor did the Engli
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Page 257 and 258: more pleasing than an elaborate dra
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Page 261 and 262: FRIDA FRIDAY FRIDA AS WE LAY AWAKE
Page 263 and 264: spectacle to spectacle, as if fearf
Page 265 and 266: aside for them? A man cannot wheedl
Page 267 and 268: not detect where the jewel lies, wh
Page 269 and 270: It does not cost much for these her
Page 271 and 272: “With murmurs loud, like rivers f
Page 273: of the hills which overlook our nat
Page 277 and 278: And yarrow in blanch tints is dyed,
Page 279 and 280: weight of water standing over the g
Page 281 and 282: The grating of a pebble annuls them
Page 283 and 284: expressed, or to attend to their li
Page 285 and 286: interpret another’s experience on
Page 287 and 288: Englishman, who cultivates the art
Page 289 and 290: and the present. But Chaucer is fre
Page 291 and 292: Chaucer’s remarkably trustful and
Page 293 and 294: leaves a thin varnish or glaze over
Page 295 and 296: To an unskilful rhymer the Muse thu
Page 297 and 298: “Unless above himself he can Erec
Page 299 and 300: Dangling this way and that, their l
Page 301 and 302: sion, so that the mind hesitates to
Page 303 and 304: “Yesterday, at dawn,” says Hafi
Page 305 and 306: As we looked up in silence to those
Page 307: To Return to The Electronics Classi
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