life but so
much over and above the usual allowance." "He realized what the
Orientals meant by contemplation and forsaking of works." "The day
advanced as if to light some work of his--it was morning and lo! now it
is evening and nothing memorable is accomplished..." "The evening train
has gone by," and "all the restless world with it. The fishes in the
pond no longer feel its rumbling and he is more alone than ever..." His
meditations are interrupted only by the faint sound of the Concord
bell--'tis prayer-meeting night in the village--"a melody as it were,
imported into the wilderness..." "At a distance over the woods the
sound acquires a certain vibratory hum as if the pine needles in the
horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept... A vibration of the
universal lyre... Just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant
ridge of earth interesting to the eyes by the azure tint it imparts."
... Part of the echo may be "the voice of the wood; the same trivial
words and notes sung by the wood nymph." It is darker, the poet's flute
is heard out over the pond and Walden hears the swan song of that "Day"
and faintly echoes... Is it a transcendental tune of Concord? 'Tis an
evening when the "whole body is one sense," ... and before ending his
day he looks out over the clear, crystalline water of the pond and
catches a glimpse of the shadow--thought he saw in the morning's mist
and haze--he knows that by his final submission, he possesses the
"Freedom of the Night." He goes up the "pleasant hillside of pines,
hickories," and moonlight to his cabin, "with a strange liberty in
Nature, a part of herself."

VI--Epilogue

1

The futility of attempting to trace the source or primal impulse of an
art-inspiration may be admitted without granting that human qualities
or attributes which go with personality cannot be suggested, and that
artistic intuitions which parallel them cannot be reflected in music.
Actually accomplishing the latter is a problem, more or less arbitrary
to an open mind, more or less impossible to a prejudiced mind.

That which the composer intends to represent as "high vitality" sounds
like something quite different to different listeners. That which I
like to think suggests Thoreau's submission to nature may, to another,
seem something like Hawthorne's "conception of the relentlessness of an
evil conscience"--and to the rest of our friends, but a series of
unpleasant sounds. How far can the