Page:The writings of Henry David Thoreau, v2.djvu/204

 past and away. But the bell rings, and I must get off the track and let the cars go by;--


 * What's the railroad to me?
 * I never go to see
 * Where it ends.
 * It fills a few hollows,
 * And makes banks for the swallows,
 * It sets the sand a-blowing,
 * And the blackberries a-growing,

but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing.

Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, I am more alone than ever. For the rest of the long afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team along the distant highway.

Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings