Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/338

328. It is encouraging that this intelligence and brilliancy or splendor should belong to the dwellings of men, and not to the cliffs and micaceous rocks and lakes exclusively.

To Second Division Brook.

There is a meadow on the Assabet, just above Derby's bridge (it may contain an acre, bounded on one side by the river, on the other by alders and a hill), completely covered with small hummocks which have lodged on it in the winter, covering it like the mounds in a graveyard, at pretty regular intervals. Their edges are rounded, and they and the paths between them are covered with a firm, short, green sward, with here and there hard-hacks springing out of them, so that they make excellent seats, especially in the shade of an elm that grows there. They are completely united with the meadow, forming little oblong hillocks from one to ten feet long. I love to ponder the natural history thus written on the banks of the stream; for every higher freshet and intenser frost is recorded by it. The stream keeps a faithful journal of every event in its experience, whatever race may settle on its banks. It purls past this natural graveyard with a storied murmur, and no doubt it could find endless employment for an Old Mortality in renewing its epitaphs.

The progress of the season is indescribable.