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 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 of a plug!That devilish Iron Horse,whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town,has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot,and he 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!Where is the country's champion,the Moore of Moore Hall,to meet him at the Deep Cut 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 is itself unchanged,the same water which my youthful eyes fell on;all the change is in me.It has not acquired one permanent 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 to-night,as if I had not seen 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 thought,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.
The cars never pause to look at it;yet I fancy that the engineers and firemen and brakemen,and those passengers who have a season ticket and see it often,are better men for the sight.The engineer does not forget at night,or his nature does not,that he has beheld this vision of serenity and purity once at least during the day.Though seen but once,it helps to wash out State Street and the engine's soot.One proposes that it be called “God's Drop.”
I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet,but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond,which is more elevated,by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter,and on the other directly and manifestly to Concord River,which is lower,by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other geological period it may have flowed,and by a little digging,which God forbid,it can be made to flow thither again.If by living thus reserved and austere,like a hermit in the woods,so long,it has acquired such wonderful purity,who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of Flint's Pond should be mingled with it,or itself should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave?
***
Flint's,or Sandy Pond,in Lincoln,our greatest lake and inland sea,lies about a mile east of Walden.It is much larger,being said to contain one hundred and ninety-seven acres,and is more fertile in fish;but it is comparatively shallow,and not remarkably pure.A walk through the woods thither was often my recreation.It was worth the while,if only to feel the wind blow on your cheek freely,and see the waves run,and remember the life of mariners.I went a-chestnutting there in the fall,on windy days,when the nuts were dropping into the water and were washed to my feet;and one day,as I crept along its sedgy shore,the fresh spray blowing in my face,I came upon the mouldering wreck of a boat,the sides gone,and hardly more than the impression of its flat bottom left amid the rushes;yet its model was sharply defined,as if it were a large decayed pad,with its veins.It was as impressive a wreck as one could imagine on the seashore,and had as good a moral.It is by this time mere vegetable mould and undistinguishable pond shore,through which rushes and flags have pushed up.I used to admire the ripple marks on the sandy bottom,at the north end of this pond,made firm and hard to the feet of the wader by the pressure of the water,and the rushes which grew in Indian file,in waving lines,corresponding to these marks,rank behind rank,as if the waves had planted them.There also I have found,in considerable quantities,curious balls,composed apparently of fine grass or roots,of pipewort perhaps,from half an inch to four inches in diameter,and perfectly spherical.These wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy bottom,and are sometimes cast on the shore.They are either solid grass,or have a little sand in the middle.At first you would say that they were formed by the action of the waves,like a pebble;yet the smallest are made of equally coarse materials,half an inch long,and they are produced only at one season of the year.Moreover,the waves,I suspect,do not so much construct as wear down a material which has already acquired consistency.They preserve their form when dry for an indefinite period.
