comes suddenly a ship at anchor, or rather seems
beating up against the summer wind, in a regatta of blossoms.

Early as it is, the greater part of the flowers are already expanded.
Indeed, that experience of Thoreau's, of watching them open in the
first sunbeams, rank by rank, is not easily obtained, unless perhaps
in a narrow stream, where the beautiful slumberers are more regularly
marshalled. In our lake, at least, they open irregularly, though
rapidly. But, this morning, many linger as buds, while others peer up,
in half-expanded beauty, beneath the lifted leaves, frolicsome as
Pucks or baby-nymphs. As you raise the leaf, in such cases, it is
impossible not to imagine that a pair of tiny hands have upheld it, or
else that the pretty head will dip down again, and disappear. Others,
again, have expanded all but the inmost pair of white petals, and
these spring apart at the first touch of the finger on the stem. Some
spread vast vases of fragrance, six or seven inches in diameter, while
others are small and delicate, with petals like fine lace-work.
Smaller still, we sometimes pass a flotilla of infant leaves, an inch
in diameter. All these grow from the deep, dark water,--and the
blacker it is, the fairer their whiteness shows. But your eye follows
the stem often vainly into those sombre depths, and vainly seeks to
behold Sabrina fair, sitting with her twisted braids of lilies,
beneath the glassy, cool, but not translucent wave. Do not start,
when, in such an effort, only your own dreamy face looks back upon
you, beyond the gunwale of the reflected boat, and you find that you
float double, self and shadow.

Let us rest our paddles, and look round us, while the idle motion
sways our light skiff onward, now half-embayed among the lily-pads,
now lazily gliding over intervening gulfs. There is a great deal going
on in these waters and their fringing woods and meadows. All the
summer long, the pond is bordered with successive walls of flowers. In
early spring emerge the yellow catkins of the swamp-willow, first;
then the long tassels of the graceful alders expand and droop, till
they weep their yellow dust upon the water; then come the
birch-blossoms, more tardily; then the downy leaves and white clusters
of the medlar or shadbush (_Amelanchier Canadensis_ of Gray); these
dropping, the roseate chalices of the mountain-laurel open; as they
fade into melancholy brown, the sweet Azalea uncloses; and before its
last honeyed