Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/119

 is almost identical with that; for in the vigorous fertile days of June when the rills are dry, the grass-blades are their only channels. And from year to year, the herds drink this green stream, and the mower cuts from the out-welling supply,—what the several needs require.

So the human life but dies down to the surface of Nature; but puts forth its green blade to eternity. When the ground is completely bare of snow, and a few warm days have dried its surface, it is pleasant to compare the faint tender signs of the infant year, just peeping forth, with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which has withstood the winter. The various thistles which have not yet sown their seeds; the graceful reeds and rushes, whose winter is more gay and stately than their summer, as if not till then was their beauty ripe. I never tire of admiring their arching, drooping, and sheaf-like tops. It is like summer to our winter memories, and one of the forms which art loves to perpetuate,—wild oats perchance, and Life Everlasting, whose autumn has now arrived. These unexhausted granaries of the [71]