nce, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my
youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me. It has not acquired one
permanent wrinkle after all its ripples. It is perennially young, and
I may stand and see a swallow dip apparently to pick an insect from its
surface as of yore. It struck me again tonight, as if I had not seen it
almost daily for more than twenty years--Why, here is Walden, the same
woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago; where a forest was
cut down last winter another is springing up by its shore as lustily as
ever; the same thought is welling up to its surface that was then; it
is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and it
may be to me. It is the work of a brave man surely, in whom there was no
guile! He rounded this water with his hand, deepened and clarified it in
his thought, and in his will bequeathed it to Concord. I see by its face
that it is visited by the same reflection; and I can almost say, Walden,
is it you?

It is no dream of mine,
To ornament a line;
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even.
I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o'er;
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its deepest resort
Lies high in my thought.

The cars never pause to look at it; yet I fancy that the engineers and
firemen and brakemen, and those passengers who have a season ticket and
see it often, are better men for the sight. The engineer does not forget
at night, or his nature does not, that he has beheld this vision of
serenity and purity once at least during the day. Though seen but once,
it helps to wash out State Street and the engine's soot. One proposes
that it be called "God's Drop."

I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is on
the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond, which is
more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and
on the other directly and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower,
by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other geological
period it may have flowed, and by a little digging, which God forbid,
it can be made to flow thither again. If by living thus reserved and
austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such
wonderful purity, who would no