Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/177

Rh And can'st expand thee there,

And breathe enough of air?

Even beyond the West

Thou migratest,

Into unclouded tracts,

Without a pilgrim's axe,

Cleaving thy road on high

With thy well-tempered brow,

And mak'st thyself a clearing in the sky.

Upholding heaven, holding down earth,

Thy pastime from thy birth;

Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other,

May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

At length, like Rasselas and other inhabitants of happy valleys, we had resolved to scale the blue wall which bounded the western horizon, though not without misgivings that thereafter no visible fairy land would exist for us. But it would be long to tell of our adventures, and we have no time this afternoon, transporting ourselves in imagination up this hazy Nashua valley, to go over again that pilgrimage. We have since made many similar excursions to the principal mountains of New England and New York, and even far in the wilderness, and have passed a night on the summit of many of them. And now when we look again westward from our native hills, Wachusett and Monadnock have retreated once more among the blue and fabulous mountains in the horizon, though our eyes rest on the very rocks on both of them, where we have pitched our tent for a night, and boiled our hasty-pudding amid the clouds.

As late as 1724 there was no house on the north side of the Nashua, but only scattered wigwams and gristly