No More Learning

What
fine relations are established between the traveler who discovers this
airy column from some eminence in the forest and him who sits below!
Up goes the smoke as silently and naturally as the vapor exhales from
the leaves, and as busy disposing itself in wreaths as the housewife
on the hearth below. It is a hieroglyphic of man's life, and suggests
more intimate and important things than the boiling of a pot. Where
its fine column rises above the forest, like an ensign, some human
life has planted itself,--and such is the beginning of Rome, the
establishment of the arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on
the prairies of America or the steppes of Asia.

And now we descend again, to the brink of this woodland lake, which
lies in a hollow of the hills, as if it were their expressed juice,
and that of the leaves which are annually steeped in it. Without
outlet or inlet to the eye, it has still its history, in the lapse of
its waves, in the rounded pebbles on its shore, and in the pines which
grow down to its brink. It has not been idle, though sedentary, but,
like Abu Musa, teaches that "sitting still at home is the heavenly
way; the going out is the way of the world. " Yet in its evaporation it
travels as far as any. In summer it is the earth's liquid eye, a
mirror in the breast of nature. The sins of the wood are washed out
in it. See how the woods form an amphitheatre about it, and it is an
arena for all the genialness of nature. All trees direct the traveler
to its brink, all paths seek it out, birds fly to it, quadrupeds flee
to it, and the very ground inclines toward it. It is nature's saloon,
where she has sat down to her toilet. Consider her silent economy and
tidiness; how the sun comes with his evaporation to sweep the dust
from its surface each morning, and a fresh surface is constantly
welling up; and annually, after whatever impurities have accumulated
herein, its liquid transparency appears again in the spring. In summer
a hushed music seems to sweep across its surface.
But now a plain
sheet of snow conceals it from our eyes, except where the wind has
swept the ice bare, and the sere leaves are gliding from side to side,
tacking and veering on their tiny voyages. Here is one just keeled up
against a pebble on shore, a dry beech leaf, rocking still, as if it
would start again. A skillful engineer, methinks, might project its
course since it fell from the parent stem. Here are all the elements
for such a calculation. Its present position, the direction of the
wind, the level of the pond, and how much more is given. In its
scarred edges and veins is its log rolled up.

We fancy ourselves in the interior of a larger house. The surface of
the pond is our deal table or sanded floor, and the woods rise
abruptly from its edge, like the walls of a cottage. The lines set to
catch pickerel through the ice look like a larger culinary
preparation, and the men stand about on the white ground like pieces
of forest furniture. The actions of these men, at the distance of
half a mile over the ice and snow, impress us as when we read the
exploits of Alexander in history. They seem not unworthy of the
scenery, and as momentous as the conquest of kingdoms.

Again we have wandered through the arches of the wood, until from its
skirts we hear the distant booming of ice from yonder bay of the
river, as if it were moved by some other and subtler tide than oceans
know. To me it has a strange sound of home, thrilling as the voice of
one's distant and noble kindred. A mild summer sun shines over forest
and lake, and though there is but one green leaf for many rods, yet
nature enjoys a serene health. Every sound is fraught with the same
mysterious assurance of health, as well now the creaking of the boughs
in January, as the soft sough of the wind in July.

When Winter fringes every bough
With his fantastic wreath,
And puts the seal of silence now
Upon the leaves beneath;

When every stream in its penthouse
Goes gurgling on its way,
And in his gallery the mouse
Nibbleth the meadow hay;

Methinks the summer still is nigh,
And lurketh underneath,
As that same meadow mouse doth lie
Snug in that last year's heath.