Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/128

114 in eternity. I wish again to participate in the serenity of nature, to share the happiness of the river and the woods. I thus from time to time break off my connection with eternal truths, and go with the shallow stream of human affairs, grinding at the mill of the Philistines. But when my task is done, with never-failing confidence, I devote myself to the infinite again. It would be sweet to deal with men more, I can imagine, but where dwell they? Not in the fields which I traverse.

Jan. 4, 1858. That bright and warm reflection of sunlight from the insignificant edging of stubble was remarkable. I was coming down stream over the meadow on the ice, within four or five rods of the eastern shore, the sun on my left about a quarter of an hour above the horizon. The ice was soft and sodden, of a dull lead color, quite dark and reflecting no light, as I looked eastward, but my eyes caught, by accident, a singular, sunny brightness, reflected from the narrow border of stubble only three or four inches high, and as many feet wide perhaps, which rose along the edge of the ice at the foot of the hill. It was not a mere brightening of the bleached stubble, but the warm and yellow light of the sun, which, as appeared, it was peculiarly fitted to reflect. It was that amber light from the west which we sometimes witness after