The Essential Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated Collection of the Thoreau's Greatest Works). Генри Дэвид Торо

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СКАЧАТЬ exhaled their scent,

       And beasts knew what was meant,

       The trees a welcome waved,

       And lakes their margins laved,

       When thy free mind

       To my retreat did wind.

      It was a summer eve,

       The air did gently heave

       While yet a low-hung cloud

       Thy eastern skies did shroud;

       The lightning's silent gleam,

       Startling my drowsy dream,

       Seemed like the flash

       Under thy dark eyelash.

      Still will I strive to be

       As if thou wert with me;

       Whatever path I take,

       It shall be for thy sake,

       Of gentle slope and wide,

       As thou wert by my side,

       Without a root

       To trip thy gentle foot.

      I 'll walk with gentle pace,

       And choose the smoothest place

       And careful dip the oar,

       And shun the winding shore,

       And gently steer my boat

       Where water-lilies float,

       And cardinal flowers

       Stand in their sylvan bowers.

      It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself. The shallowest still water is unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running aground. We notice that it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to see the river bottom merely; and so are there manifold visions in the direction of every object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens from their surface. Some men have their eyes naturally intended to the one and some to the other object.

      "A man that looks on glass,

       On it may stay his eye,

       Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass,

       And the heavens espy."

      Two men in a skiff, whom we passed hereabouts, floating buoyantly amid the reflections of the trees, like a feather in mid-air, or a leaf which is wafted gently from its twig to the water without turning over, seemed still in their element, and to have very delicately availed themselves of the natural laws. Their floating there was a beautiful and successful experiment in natural philosophy, and it served to ennoble in our eyes the art of navigation; for as birds fly and fishes swim, so these men sailed. It reminded us how much fairer and nobler all the actions of man might be, and that our life in its whole economy might be as beautiful as the fairest works of art or nature.

      The sun lodged on the old gray cliffs, and glanced from every pad; the bulrushes and flags seemed to rejoice in the delicious light and air; the meadows were a-drinking at their leisure; the frogs sat meditating, all sabbath thoughts, summing up their week, with one eye out on the golden sun, and one toe upon a reed, eying the wondrous universe in which they act their part; the fishes swam more staid and soberly, as maidens go to church; shoals of golden and silver minnows rose to the surface to behold the heavens, and then sheered off into more sombre aisles; they swept by as if moved by one mind, continually gliding past each other, and yet preserving the form of their battalion unchanged, as if they were still embraced by the transparent membrane which held the spawn; a young band of brethren and sisters trying their new fins; now they wheeled, now shot ahead, and when we drove them to the shore and cut them off, they dexterously tacked and passed underneath the boat. Over the old wooden bridges no traveller crossed, and neither the river nor the fishes avoided to glide between the abutments.

      Here was a village not far off behind the woods, Billerica, settled not long ago, and the children still bear the names of the first settlers in this late "howling wilderness"; yet to all intents and purposes it is as old as Fernay or as Mantua, an old gray town where men grow old and sleep already under moss-grown monuments,—outgrow their usefulness. This is ancient Billerica, (Villarica?) now in its dotage, named from the English Billericay, and whose Indian name was Shawshine. I never heard that it was young. See, is not nature here gone to decay, farms all run out, meeting-house grown gray and racked with age? If you would know of its early youth, ask those old gray rocks in the pasture. It has a bell that sounds sometimes as far as Concord woods; I have heard that,—ay, hear it now. No wonder that such a sound startled the dreaming Indian, and frightened his game, when the first bells were swung on trees, and sounded through the forest beyond the plantations of the white man. But to-day I like best the echo amid these cliffs and woods. It is no feeble imitation, but rather its original, or as if some rural Orpheus played over the strain again to show how it should sound.

      Dong, sounds the brass in the east,

       As if to a funeral feast,

       But I like that sound the best

       Out of the fluttering west.

      The steeple ringeth a knell,

       But the fairies' silvery bell

       Is the voice of that gentle folk,

       Or else the horizon that spoke.

      Its metal is not of brass,

       But air, and water, and glass,

       And under a cloud it is swung,

       And by the wind it is rung.

      When the steeple tolleth the noon,

       It soundeth not so soon,

       Yet it rings a far earlier hour,

       And the sun has not reached its tower.

      On the other hand, the road runs up to Carlisle, city of the woods, which, if it is less civil, is the more natural. It does well hold the earth together. It gets laughed at because it is a small town, I know, but nevertheless it is a place where great men may be born any day, for fair winds and foul blow right on over it without distinction. It has a meeting-house and horse-sheds, a tavern and a blacksmith's shop, for centre, and a good deal of wood to cut and cord yet. And

      "Bedford, most noble Bedford,

       I shall not thee forget."

      History has remembered thee; especially that meek and humble petition of thy old planters, like the wailing of the Lord's own people, "To the gentlemen, the selectmen" of Concord, praying to be erected into a separate parish. We can hardly credit that so plaintive a psalm resounded but little more than a century ago along these Babylonish waters. "In the extreme difficult seasons of heat and cold," said they, "we were СКАЧАТЬ