Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/423

Rh rivers and ponds, and draws now upon his summer stores. Life is reduced to its lowest terms. There is no home for you now in this freezing wind, but in that shelter which you prepared in the summer. You steer straight across the fields to that in season. I can with difficulty tell when I am over the river. There is a similar crust over my heart. Where I rambled in the summer, and gathered flowers, and rested on the grass by the brook side in the shade, now no grass, nor flowers, nor brook, nor shade, but cold unvaried snow, stretching mile after mile, and no place to sit. Look at White Pond, that crystal drop that was, in which the umbrageous shore was reflected, and schools of fabulous perch and shiners rose to the surface, and where with difficulty you made your way along the pebbly shore in a summer afternoon, to the bathing place. Now you stalk rapidly across where it was, muffled in your cloak, over a more level snow field than usual, furrowed by the wind; its finny inhabitants and its pebbly shore all hidden and forgotten, and you would shudder at the thought of wetting your feet.

A fine display of the northern lights aften ten, flashing up from all parts of the horizon to the zenith, where there was a kind of core formed, stretching S.S.E. N.N.W., surrounded by what looked like a permanent white cloud,