Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/185

Rh if it were the most delicate frost-work in a winter morning, reflecting no heat, but onty light. And as they rock and wave in the strong wind, even a mile off, the light courses up and down them as over a field of grain, i. e., they are alternately light and dark, like looms above the forest, when the shuttle is thrown between the light woof and the dark web. At sight of this my spirit is like a lit tree. It runs or flashes over their parallel boughs as when you play with the teeth of a comb. Not only osiers, but pine needles, shine brighter, I think, in the spring, and arrow-heads and railroad rails, etc., etc. Anacreon noticed this spring shining. Is it not from the higher sun and cleansed air and greater animation of nature? There is a warmer red on the leaves of the shrub oak and on the tail of the hawk circling over them.

I sit on the cliff and look toward Sudbury. I see its meeting-houses and its common, and its fields lie but little beyond my ordinary walk. How distant in all important senses may be the town which yet is within sight. With a glass I might, perchance, read the time on its clock. How circumscribed are our walks after all! with the utmost industry we cannot expect to know well an area more than six miles square; and yet we pretend to be travelers, to be acquainted with Siberia and Africa.