Excerpt from “The
Ponds” in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (pgs.
128-129, 131-133)
“A lake is the
landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the
beholder measures the depth of his own nature.
The fluviatile[a]
trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded
hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.
“Standing on the
smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm September afternoon,
when a slight haze makes the opposite shore-line indistinct, I have seen whence
came the expression, ‘the glassy surface of a lake.’ When you invert your head,
it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and
gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of the
atmosphere from another. You would think
you could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the swallows which
skim over might perch on it. Indeed,
they sometimes dive below the lines, as it were by mistake, and are
undeceived. As you look over the pond
westward you are obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes against
the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are equally bright; and if,
between the two, you survey its surface critically, it is literally as smooth
as glass, except where the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over
its whole intent, by their motions in the sun produce the finest imaginable
sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I have said, a
swallow skims so low as to touch it. It
may be that in the distance a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in
the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and another where it
strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; or here and
there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface, which the fishes
dart at and so dimple it again. It is
like molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure
and beautiful like the imperfections in glass.
You may often detect a yet smoother and darker water, separated from the
rest of it by an invisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on
it. From a hilltop you can see a fish
leap in almost any part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this
smooth surface but it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole
lake. It is wonderful with what elaborateness
this simple fact is advertised, -- this piscine[b]
murder will out, -- and from my distant perch I distinguish the circling
undulations when they are a half a dozen rods in diameter. You can even detect a water bug (Gyrinus) ceaselessly progressing over
the smooth surface a quarter of a mile off; for they furrow the water slightly,
making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters
glide over it without rippling it perceptibly.
When the surface is considerably agitated there are no skaters nor
water-bugs on it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave their havens and
adventurously glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they completely
cover it. It is a shooting employment, one of those fine
days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on
a stump on such a height as this, over-looking the pond, and study the dimpling
circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid
the reflected skies and trees. Over this
great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently soothed
away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling leap or an
insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in welling up of its fountain,
the gently pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are
undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena
of the lake! Again the works of man shine as in spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb
sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring
morning. Every motion of an oar or an
insect produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo!...
“When I first
paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine
and oak woods, and in some of its coves grape-vines had run over the trees next
the water and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. The hills which form its shores are so steep,
and the woods on them were then so high that, as you looked down from the west
end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre for some kind of sylvan
spectacle. I have spent many an hour
when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr [or wind] willed,
having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in
a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by the boat touching the
sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to; days when
idleness was the most attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I stolen away,
preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if
not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I
regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher’s
desk. But since I left those shores the
woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there
will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas
through which you see the water. My Muse
may be excused if she is silent henceforth.
How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut
down?
“Now the trunks of
trees on the bottom, and the old log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are
gone, and the villagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of going to
the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring its water, which should be as
sacred as the Ganges[c]
at least, to the village in a pipe, to wash their dishes with! – to earn their
Walden by the turning of a cock or drawing a plug! That devilish Iron Horse[d],
whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling
Spring[e]
with his foot, and it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore,
that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary
Greeks![f] Where is the country’s champion, the Moore of
Moore-Hall[g],
to meet him at the Deep Cut[h]
and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?
“Nevertheless, of
all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves
its purity. Many men have been likened
to it, but few deserve that honor.
Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that,
and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on
its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it itself unchanged, the same
water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me. It has not acquired one wrinkle after all its
ripples. It is perennially young, and I
may stand and see a swallow dip apparently to pick an insect from its surface
as of yore. It struck me again tonight,
as if I had not see it almost daily for more than twenty years, -- Why, here is
Walden, the same woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago; where a
forest was cut down last winter another is springing up by its shore as lustily
as ever; the same thought is welling up to its surface that was then; it is the
same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and it may be to me. It is the work of a brave man surely, in whom
there was no guile! He rounded this water with his hand, deepened and clarified
it, in his though, and in his will bequeathed it to Concord. I see by its face that it is visited by the
same reflection; and I can almost say, Walden, is it you?
“It is no dream of
mine,
To ornament a line;
I cannot come
nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to
Walden even.
I am its stony
shore,
And the breeze that
passes o'er;
In the hollow of my
hand
Are its water and
its sand,
And its deepest
resort
Lies high in my
thought.”
[a]
Of, found in, or produced by the river
[e]
popular spring of Walden Woods that was sold for water rights in 1844 for the
Fitchburg railroad
[f]
tale from the Trojan War about the deception the Greeks used to enter the city
of Troy and win the war
[g] hero of an English ballad,
who killed a dragon
[h] The
"Deep Cut" is the route of the Fitchburg Railroad, described by
Thoreau as "about a quarter of a mile long — and thirty or
forty feet deep"
 |
| Source: Wikipedia.org |
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Concord, Massachusetts; American poet/writer, abolitionist, transcendentalist, naturalist; Wrote Walden: Life in the Woods about his year in a one-room cabin on Walden Pond
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