Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/305

Rh effort destined to be successful. The cold resolve gives birth to, begets nothing. The theme that seeks me, not I, it. The poet's relation to his theme is the relation of lovers. It is no more to be courted. Obey, report.

Though they are cutting off the wood at Walden, it is not all loss. It makes some new and unexpected prospects. As I stood on the partially cleared bank at the E. end of the pond, I looked S. over the side of the hill into a deep dell, still wooded, and saw not more than thirty rods off a chopper at his work. I was half a dozen rods distant from the standing wood, and I saw him through a vista between two trees. He appeared to me charmingly distinct as in a picture, of which the two trees were the frame. He was seen against the snow on the hillside beyond. I could distinguish each part of his dress perfectly, and the axe with distinct outline, as he raised it above his head, the black iron against the snow. I could hear every stroke distinctly. Yet I should have deemed it ridiculous to call to him, he appeared so distant. He appeared with the same distinctness as objects seen through a pin hole in a card. This was the effect rather than what would have been by comparison of him, his size with the nearer trees between which I saw him, and which made the canopied roof of the grove far above his