Gracefulness is undulatory like these waves, and perhaps the sailor acquires a superior suppleness and grace through the planks of his ship from the element on which he lives.
The song sparrow, whose voice is one of the first heard in the spring, sings occasionally throughout the season, from a greater depth in the summer, as it were behind the notes of other birds.
As the temperature and density of the atmosphere, so the aspects of our life vary.
In this bright and chaste light the world seemed like a pavilion made for holidays and washed in light. The ocean was a summer's lake, and the land a smooth lawn for disport, while in the horizon the sunshine seemed to fall on walled towns and villas, and the course of our lives was seen winding on like a country road over the plain.[486]
When we looked out from under our tent, the trees were seen dimly through the mist, and a cool dew hung upon the grass, and in the damp air we seemed to inhale a solid fragrance.
Communicating with the villas and hills and forests on either hand, by the glances we sent them, or the echoes we awakened. We glanced up many a pleasant ravine with its farmhouse in the distance, where some contributory stream came in; again the site of a sawmill and a few forsaken eel-pots were all that greeted us.[487]
While we sail here we can remember unreservedly those friends who dwell far away on the banks and by the sources of this very river, and people this world for us, without any harsh and unfriendly interruptions.
At noon his horn[488] is heard echoing from shore to shore to give notice of his approach to the farmer's wife with whom he is to take his dinner, frequently in such retired scenes that only muskrats and kingfishers seem to hear.
If ever our idea of a friend is realized it will be in some broad and generous natural person, as frank as the daylight, in whose presence our behavior will be as simple and unconstrained as the wanderer amid the recesses of these hills.
I who sail now in a boat, have I not sailed in a thought? Vide Chaucer.