Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/328

314 that you would think music was being born again as in the days of Orpheus. Orpheus and Apollo are certainly there taking lessons; aye, and the jay and the blackbird, too, learn now where they stole their "thunder." They are, perforce, silent, meditating new strains.

When the playful breeze drops on the pool, it springs to right and left quick as a kitten playing with dead leaves, clapping her paw on them These ripple lakes lie now in the midst of mostly bare brown or tawny dry woodlands, themselves the most living objects. They may say to the first woodland flowers, We played with the north winds here before you were born.

April 10, 1841. How much virtue there is in simply seeing. We may almost say that the hero has striven in vain for his preëminency, if the student oversees him. The woman who sits in the house and sees is a match for a stirring captain. Those still piercing eyes, as faithfully exercised as their talent, will keep her even with Alexander or Shakespeare. They may go to Asia with parade, or to fairyland, but not beyond her ray. We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes. The farthest blue streak in the horizon I can see, I may reach before many sunsets. What I saw alters not. In