"Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,[1]
Repeats the music of the rain,
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
Through thee as thou through Concord plain.

"Thou in thy narrow banks art pent;
The stream I love unbounded goes;
Through flood and sea and firmament,
Through light, through life, it forward flows.

"I see the inundation sweet,
I hear the spending of the stream,
Through years, through men, through nature fleet,
Through passion, thought, through power and dream."

This mood occurs frequently in Thoreau. The hard world of matter
becomes suddenly all fluent and spiritual, and he sees himself in
it--sees God. "This earth," he cries, "which is spread out like a map
around me, is but the lining of my inmost soul exposed." "In _me_ is
the sucker that I see;" and, of Walden Pond,

"I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o'er."

"Suddenly old Time winked at me--ah, you know me, you rogue--and news
had come that IT was well. That ancient universe is in such capital
health, I think, undoubtedly, it will never die. . . . I see, smell,
taste, hear, feel that ever-lasting something to which we are allied,
at once our maker, our abode, our destiny, our very selves." It was