And There Stand All Around The Alders,
And Birches, And Oaks, And Maples Full Of Glee And Sap, Holding
In Their Buds Until The Waters Subside.
You shall perhaps run
aground on Cranberry Island, only some spires of last year's
pipe-grass above water, to show where the danger is, and get as
good a freezing there as anywhere on the Northwest Coast.
I never
voyaged so far in all my life. You shall see men you never heard
of before, whose names you don't know, going away down through
the meadows with long ducking-guns, with water-tight boots wading
through the fowl-meadow grass, on bleak, wintry, distant shores,
with guns at half-cock, and they shall see teal, blue-winged,
green-winged, shelldrakes, whistlers, black ducks, ospreys, and
many other wild and noble sights before night, such as they who
sit in parlors never dream of. You shall see rude and sturdy,
experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up
their summer's wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller
of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a
chestnut is of meat; who were out not only in '75 and 1812, but
have been out every day of their lives; greater men than Homer,
or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to say so;
they never took to the way of writing. Look at their fields, and
imagine what they might write, if ever they should put pen to
paper. Or what have they not written on the face of the earth
already, clearing, and burning, and scratching, and harrowing,
and ploughing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and out, and
over and over, again and again, erasing what they had already
written for want of parchment.
As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of
to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives, and
demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time
veritably future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young,
divine, in the wind and rain which never die.
The respectable folks, -
Where dwell they?
They whisper in the oaks,
And they sigh in the hay;
Summer and winter, night and day,
Out on the meadow, there dwell they.
They never die,
Nor snivel, nor cry,
Nor ask our pity
With a wet eye.
A sound estate they ever mend
To every asker readily lend;
To the ocean wealth,
To the meadow health,
To Time his length,
To the rocks strength,
To the stars light,
To the weary night,
To the busy day,
To the idle play;
And so their good cheer never ends,
For all are their debtors, and all their friends.
Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current,
which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its
influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of
Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions.
It has been proposed, that the town should adopt for its coat of
arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times round.
I have read that a descent of an eighth of an inch in a mile is
sufficient to produce a flow.
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