. Through the year with Thoreau. springs, in thesale of lands, are not valued for as much as they areworth. I lie almost flat, resting my hands on whatoffers, to drink at this water where it bubbles, at thevery udders of Nature, for man is never weaned fromher breast while this life lasts. How many times ina single walk does he stoop for a draught! Journal, iv, 188. July 12, 1857. I drink at every cooler spring inmy walk these afternoons and love to eye the bot-tom there, with its pebbly caddis-cases, or its whiteworms, or perchance a luxurious frog cooling himselfnext my nose. Sometimes the f
. Through the year with Thoreau. springs, in thesale of lands, are not valued for as much as they areworth. I lie almost flat, resting my hands on whatoffers, to drink at this water where it bubbles, at thevery udders of Nature, for man is never weaned fromher breast while this life lasts. How many times ina single walk does he stoop for a draught! Journal, iv, 188. July 12, 1857. I drink at every cooler spring inmy walk these afternoons and love to eye the bot-tom there, with its pebbly caddis-cases, or its whiteworms, or perchance a luxurious frog cooling himselfnext my nose. Sometimes the farmer, foreseeing hay-ing, has been prudent enough to sink a tub in one,which secures a clear deep space. . When a springhas been allowed to fill up, to be muddied by cattle,or, being exposed to the sun by cutting down thetrees and bushes, to dry up, it affects me sadly, likean institution going to decay. Sometimes I see, onone side the tub, — the tub overhung with variouswild plants and flowers, its edge almost completely. t 63 ] concealed even from the searching eye, — the whitesand freshly cast up where the spring is bubbling I sit patiently by the spring I have cleanedout and deepened with my hands, and see the foulwater rapidly dissipated like a curling vapor andgiving place to the cool and clear. Sometimes I canlook a yard or more into a crevice under a rock,toward the sources of a spring in a hillside, and seeit come cool and copious with incessant murmuringdown to the light. There are few more refreshingsights in hot weather. Journal, ix, 477, 478. i: 64 ] A WAVING RYE-FIELD July 8, 1851. Here are some rich rye-fields wav-ing over all the land, their heads nodding in the eve-ning breeze with an apparently alternating motion;, they do not all bend at once by ranks, but sepa-rately, and hence this agreeable alternation. How richa sight this cereal fruit, now yellow for the cradle, —flavus! It is an impenetrable phalanx. I walk for halfa mile beside thes
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