Page:Thoreau - As remembered by a young friend.djvu/123

 quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of heaven.”1

Hear the message of beauty that the telegraph-wire sung for Thoreau's ears: —

“As I went under the new telegraph wire, I heard it vibrating like a harp high overhead. It was as the sound of a far-off, glorious life, a supernal life which came down to us and vibrated the lattice-work of this life of ours, — an Æolian harp. . . . It seemed to me as if every pore of the wood was filled with music. As I put my ear to one of the posts, it laboured with the strains, as if every fibre was affected, and being seasoned or timed, rearranged according to a new and more harmonious law. Every swell and change and inflection of tone pervaded it, and seemed to proceed from the wood, the divine tree or wood, as if its very substance was transmuted.