Seeding

“ With rhythmic tides she swept the fore-shoreland,
Whereon I often set my heart’s desire,
Leaving a barren strip of watery sand,
A mirror for the moon’s chaste silver fire.
For I have built a barrier ‘gainst the sea:
No more the moon-swept tide my fruit devours;
The seed is set, and in security,
I watch the silent passage of life’s hours. ”

“ See, the dawn whitens the ground that is the colour of lees of wine; shadowy bonds seem to slip and glide away with melancholy; the water of the ponds grows bright and sifts its noise; the grass glitters and the flowers open, and the golden woods free themselves from the night. ”

“ My book remains unopened; it is pleasanter to read the earth and air. The bees hum, a wood-dove calls, the soothing roar of the rapids rises and falls. So sweet is summer air, so caressing are summer sounds.
How the sails have multiplied on the river! Is it the haze or the sudden sunlight that has transformed their canvas into unaccustomed color? Yonder a larger vessel, of different mold from the pleasure-craft, is rounding the river’s curve in her cruise up-stream. Her clean-cut prow rises high in air, her painted canvas is spread, and the sunlight strikes the gold of her sides. ”

“ The sedges grow luxuriantly around their margins, making a thick, low wall in winter, against which the winds blow in vain. If a bird must sleep in the water, such a hole comes as near to being a perfect cradle as anything could be, short of the bottom of a well. ”

“ The shade of the wood, and the sheen of the river,
The cloud, and the open sky—
He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver,
Like the light of your very eye.
The fisher hangs over the leaning boat,
And ponders the silver sea,
For Love is under the surface hid,
And a spell of thought has he. ”

“ The thirst-parched traveller in the poisonous alkali deserts holds back in deadly fear from the sedgy ponds till he finds one down whose centre is a thin, clear line, and a faint flow, the sign of running, living water, and joyfully he drinks. ”

“ When they tumbled into the tiny stream, at once the youngsters were at home and self-confident. The drake saw them all afloat, and again the procession re-formed to paddle down-stream to the sea. What adventures were they to meet with, and how many would the parents bring safely to the seashore, to run along the margin of the tide, in their pied down indistinguishable from the foamy froth washing over the seaweed? ”

“ The evening breeze should be ruffling them gallantly; and see, the fly is getting up. Countless thousands are rising off the grass, and flickering to and fro above the stream. Stand still a moment, and you will hear the air full of the soft rustle of innumerable wings. ”

“ We joined afterward in prayer and hymn, and when this simple service was over I started with Alice for a walk on the beach to the south, while Mr. Millward composed himself for a comfortable smoke in the shade. The walking on the sand just above the reach of the waves, and yet where it was wet by an occasional toppling roller that came spuming up the slope farther than its fellows, was excellent, for the wetted sand was hard and firm and cool to the feet. Everywhere lay fragments of sea-weed, shells, and the curious forms of sea life cast up by the waves. ”

“ When the devouring flames seize upon the cedar, shall not the lowly hyssop fear and tremble? When anglers draw the great leviathan from his mighty deeps, what hope have the fish of the shallow pond? When the fishing-line is dropped into the dashing torrent, can they feel secure, the waters of the purling brook? ”

“ He was always to be seen in serene afternoons haunting the river, and almost rustling with the sedge; so many sunny hours in an old man’s life, entrapping silly fish; almost grown to be the sun’s familiar ”

“ Before letting us go to our whisper, genuine bird talk like the reeds, and mixed to their vague astonishment when we return from our immutability on the pond of dreams to life — on the pond of dreams, where we never fish but our own image, without pondering on the silver fish scales! ”

“ The moonless night has a touch of frost, and is steely-clear. High and dominant amidst the Populations of the Sky, the restless and the steadfast alike, hangs the great Plough, lit with a hard radiance as of the polished and shining share. And yonder, low on the horizon, but half resurgent as yet, crouches the magnificent hunter: watchful, seemingly, and expectant: with some hint of menace in his port. ”

“ On the shore they stand together in friendly groups and clusters, and leave it for those much larger gatherings where they ride, hundreds together, ducking and bobbing on the light waves like a fleet of little painted boats, each one with a highly ornamental bird- or, rather, puffin-headed prow. ”

“ The river above the weir is radiant with the reflected glories of the skies; and the rush of the falling water alone breaks on the evening stillness. We linger long; the crimson fades from the heavens and river, but a new, almost ethereal beauty possesses the scene under the dominance of a full summer moon. ”

“ Not until you have gone through the rocky gorges, and not lost the stream; not until you have gone through the meadow, and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets could ride on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and poured your treasures into its depths—not until then can you know what love is. ”

“ The sun was half-way down, when a shepherd went by on the cliffs about his business, and spied a man in the midst of the breach of the loud seas, upon a pinnacle of reef. He hailed him, and the man turned and hailed again. ”

“ Well, remembering that we were once boys and are yet anglers, though we seldom go a-fishing, we wish, in the days of the new springtide, to all the craft, whether they be of high or low degree, bent and cramped with the winter of age or flushed with the spring of life, pleasant and peaceful days of honest sport by all watersides, and full creels and strings and wythes. ”

“ Rivers was away, as were most of her immediate neighbors, enjoying a holiday by either mountains or seashore. Rivers could see in imagination how glorious this moonlight became as the waves rolled into its path and broke there on the wet sands into a delicious rush and swirl of silvery sparkling foam. He could smell the very perfume of the sea, and feel the cold breath that the water exhales with one’s face close down by it, no matter how warm the night. ”

“ With the first blossoms of spring the thoughts of many men, both old and young, turn lightly to love—the love of angling. And as the leaves unfold, and the birds begin their wooing, and the streams become clear, the premonitory symptoms of the affection are manifested in a rummaging of drawers and lockers for fly-books and tackle boxes, and the critical examination of rods and reels, and in the testing of lines and leaders. ”

“ The screaming and the din too are so great that you can hardly hear any one speaking close to you. If you look [95] down upon the sea, as if from a tower or tall precipice, whichever way you turn you will see an enormous number of different kinds of birds skimming about and gaping for their prey, so that the sea looks like a pond which is swarming with frogs in springtime, or like those sunny hills looked at from below when they are covered with numerous flocks of sheep and goats. ”

“ The sun shone broadly on the animated scene, while the whites, from the deck of their small craft, gazed with deep interest on the strange picture before them, filled as it was with dusky natives, some erecting their forest shelters, others fishing in the stream, while still others were seeking the forest depths in pursuit of game. ”

“ When the Duchess was away or a day of holiday came, there were, more than once, a few hours on the river where, with boat drawn up under enshrouding trees, green light and lapping water, sunshine and silence, rare swans sailing serenely near as if to guard them made the background to the thrill of heavenly young wonder and joy. ”

“ Thus one that came swimming up the little quiet bay, in quest of a rock to lie upon, seemed to delight in pretending to find first one and then another too steep and difficult to get up on to (for obviously they were not) and would fling himself off from them in a sort of little sham disappointment, gambolling and rolling about, twisting himself up with seaweed, and, generally, having a most lively solitary romp. ”

“ My Early Home.
The first place that I can well remember, was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end. ”

“ I, being a foolish non-swimmer, and moreover somewhat ungregarious, have discovered a bathing paradise for myself some way further up the stream, where the interlacing boughs of cool blue-grey hybiscus foliage form an immense arbour—a dressing-room of leafy shade, through which the gurgling waters flow gently, with rippling, liquid, most musical tones—the voice of hidden streams. ”

“ Some bank beside a river clear, throw all
Thy draperies off, and rush into the stream!
Our valleys love the Summer in his pride.
Our bards are famed who strike the silver wire;
Our youths are bolder than the southern swains ”

“ He hummed a song as he swung the flail,
Swung the flail in the afternoon:
“When the idle fields are a wrecker’s tale,
That the Autumn tells to the twilight pale,
As the Year turns seaward a crimson sail,
Halloo and oh!
Hallo for the fields and the hunter’s-moon!” ”

“ But all the real river-noises were there; the birds were singing endlessly in the groves; the gulls with their hoarse language were flying seawards from the mud-flats of Truro; the water was gently lapping the sides of the boat; and voices could be heard from the distances higher up and lower down the stream. ”

“ Then, too, whence come the living creatures of all kinds, some inhabiting the dry land, others the waters, others alighting from the sky, that every part of nature may pay us some tribute; the rivers which encircle our meadows with most beauteous bends, the others which afford a passage to merchant fleets as they flow on, wide and navigable, some of which in summer time are subject to extraordinary overflowings in order that lands lying parched under a glowing sun may suddenly be watered by the rush of a midsummer torrent? ”

“ We soon got to the banks of a stream; but then had to make our way down its course through the tall, rank grass. It took us some time to reach the sea shore. There was not a boat to be seen, or any sign that the ship's crew had found the land. We left the shore, and went through a wood full of tall trees. ”

“ In a word, we must think of the stream and flow of the river, not of some eddies in it, or a back-wash here and there. Though it does not seem to be, yet the water that makes these is really going the way that the stream is, and our "noblest numbers," when closely analysed, are found to be "sculduddery" after all. ”

“ So, all the leaping, rushing multitude that entered the river a few months ago, have, ere this, gone to their doom, but their seed is planted in the icy brook, far away in the mountains, and their young will soon come forth to take the place of the parents that have passed away. ”

“ One, apparently in a spirit of daring, would set out to cross our path—leaving his little cove, he would glide with the utmost rapidity over the river in front of us, leaving a silver line on the smooth surface of the stream, and after we had passed, glide back, bobbing up and down upon the waves in our wake. ”

“ For the tutelar goddess of Sens, benignant genius presiding over the city, is a stream, or rather parent of many streams, that water the streets of their own free will, supplying thirsty beasts with copious draughts in torrid weather, and keeping up a perpetual air of rusticity and coolness. ”

“ Perchance, in the afternoon of such a day, when the water is perfectly calm and full of reflections, I paddle gently down the main stream, and, turning up the Assabet, reach a quiet cove, where I unexpectedly find myself surrounded by myriads of leaves, like fellow-voyagers, which seem to have the same purpose, or want of purpose, with myself. ”

“ Turn away from the road for Heaven is near by.” And we eat that wild honey of the wilderness, which the prophet ate when his baptizing was done.
When we wash in the stream we are washing ourselves with life. When we swim in the stream, especially against the stream, we are joying the heart of an unseen Mother who takes pride in us all, knowing that, although we must at last flow out with the stream, we can triumph over it for moments. ”

“ Soon after sunset the river clears considerably, for these water-folk rise and retire with the sun. They shut up the front of their houses, and then lie down to sleep through the long hot night as peacefully and securely in their floating cradles as any of those who live upon land. ”

“ And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep.
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep.
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge.
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. ”

“ The See lies in a desolate basin on the heights of the mountains, and every one who is shown the lake [153] hears from his guide, or any cowherd, the following legend: A shepherd arrived one day on the borders of the See, where he saw a huge golden chain lying, the other end of which remained in the water. ”