Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/314

308 life will wait for nobody, but is being matured still without delay, while I go about the streets and chaffer with this man and that to secure a living. It is as indifferent and easy meanwhile as a poor man's dog, and making acquaintance with its kind. It will cut its own channel like a mountain stream, and by the longest ridge is not kept from the sea at last. I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources. No matter what imprudent haste in my career; I am permitted to be rash. Gulfs are bridged in a twinkling, as if some unseen baggage train carried pontoons for my convenience, and while from the heights I scan the tempting but unexplored Pacific Ocean of Futurity, the ship is being carried over the mountains piece-meal on the backs of mules and lamas, whose keel shall plow its waves and bear me to the Indies. Day would not dawn if it were not for

THE INWARD MORNING.

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes

Which outward nature wears,

And in its fashion's hourly change

It all things else repairs.

In vain I look for change abroad,

And can no difference find,

Till some new ray of peace uncalled

Illumes my inmost mind.

What is it gilds the trees and clouds,

And paints the heavens so gay,

But yonder fast abiding light

With its unchanging ray?