Page:The writings of Henry David Thoreau, v2.djvu/304

 292 WALDEN looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows. Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm Septem- ber afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, " the glassy surface of a lake." When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossa- mer stretched across the valley, and gleam- ing against the distant pine woods, separat- ing one stratum of the atmosphere from another. You would think that you could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim over might perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive below the line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived. As you look over the pond westward you are obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are equally bright ; and if, between the two, you survey its surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except where the skater in- sects, at equal intervals scattered over its