iscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the
contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again.
But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said.

The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark
and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis
which all things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last.
Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at
hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were
dripping with sleety rain. I looked out the window, and lo! where
yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the transparent pond already calm
and full of hope as in a summer evening, reflecting a summer evening
sky in its bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if it had
intelligence with some remote horizon. I heard a robin in the distance,
the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note
I shall not forget for many a thousand more--the same sweet and powerful
song as of yore. O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer
day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the
twig. This at least is not the Turdus migratorius. The pitch pines and
shrub oaks about my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed
their several characters, looked brighter, greener, and more erect and
alive, as if effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. I knew that
it would not rain any more. You may tell by looking at any twig of the
forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not.
As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese flying low
over the woods, like weary travellers getting in late from Southern
lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual
consolation. Standing at my door, I could bear the rush of their wings;
when, driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with
hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut
the door, and passed my first spring night in the woods.

In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist,
sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large and
tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificial pond for their
amusement. But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up with a
great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they
had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of the