Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/205

1840] Where, on some friendly Ararat,

Resteth the weary water-rat.

No ripple shows Musketaquid,

Her very current e'en is hid,

As deepest souls do calmest rest

When thoughts are swelling in the breast;

And she, that in the summer's drought

Doth make a rippling and a rout,

Sleeps from Nawshawtuct to the Cliff,

Unruffled by a single skiff;

So like a deep and placid mind

Whose currents underneath it wind,

For by a thousand distant hills

The louder roar a thousand rills,

And many a spring which now is dumb,

And many a stream with smothered hum,

Doth faster well and swifter glide,

Though buried deep beneath the tide.

Our village shows a rural Venice,

Its broad lagunes where yonder fen is,

Far lovelier than the Bay of Naples

Yon placid cove amid the maples,

And in my neighbor's field of corn

I recognize the Golden Horn.

Here Nature taught from year to year,

When only red men came to hear,

Methinks 't was in this school of art

Venice and Naples learned their part,