SUNDAY

“The river calmly flows,

Through shining banks, through lonely glen,

Where the owl shrieks, though ne’er the cheer of men

Has stirred its mute repose,

Still if you should walk there, you would go there again.”

—CHANNING.

“The Indians tell us of a beautiful River lying far to the south, which

they call Merrimack.”

SIEUR DE MONTS, _Relations of the jesuits_, 1604.

In the morning the river and adjacent country were covered with a dense

fog, through which the smoke of our fire curled up like a still

subtiler mist; but before we had rowed many rods, the sun arose and the

fog rapidly dispersed, leaving a slight steam only to curl along the

surface of the water. It was a quiet Sunday morning, with more of the

auroral rosy and white than of the yellow light in it, as if it dated

from earlier than the fall of man, and still preserved a heathenish

integrity:—

An early unconverted Saint,

Free from noontide or evening taint,

Heathen without reproach,

That did upon the civil day encroach,

And ever since its birth

Had trod the outskirts of the earth.

But the impressions which the morning makes vanish with its dews, and

not even the most “persevering mortal” can preserve the memory of its

freshness to mid-day. As we passed the various islands, or what were

islands in the spring, rowing with our backs down stream, we gave names

to them. The one on which we had camped we called Fox Island, and one

fine densely wooded island surrounded by deep water and overrun by

grape-vines, which looked like a mass of verdure and of flowers cast

upon the waves, we named Grape Island. From Ball’s Hill to Billerica

meeting-house, the river was still twice as broad as in Concord, a

deep, dark, and dead stream, flowing between gentle hills and sometimes

cliffs, and well wooded all the way. It was a long woodland lake

bordered with willows. For long reaches we could see neither house nor

cultivated field, nor any sign of the vicinity of man. Now we coasted

along some shallow shore by the edge of a dense palisade of bulrushes,

which straightly bounded the water as if clipt by art, reminding us of

the reed forts of the East-Indians, of which we had read; and now the

bank slightly raised was overhung with graceful grasses and various

species of brake, whose downy stems stood closely grouped and naked as

in a vase, while their heads spread several feet on either side. The

dead limbs of the willow were rounded and adorned by the climbing

mikania, _Mikania scandens_, which filled every crevice in the leafy

bank, contrasting agreeably with the gray bark of its supporter and the

balls of the button-bush. The water willow, _Salix Purshiana_, when it

is of large size and entire, is the most graceful and ethereal of our

trees. Its masses of light green foliage, piled one upon another to the

height of twenty or thirty feet, seemed to float on the surface of the

water, while the slight gray stems and the shore were hardly visible

between them. No tree is so wedded to the water, and harmonizes so well

with still streams. It is even more graceful than the weeping willow,

or any pendulous trees, which dip their branches in the stream instead

of being buoyed up by it. Its limbs curved outward over the surface as

if attracted by it. It had not a New England but an Oriental character,

reminding us of trim Persian gardens, of Haroun Alraschid, and the

artificial lakes of the East.

As we thus dipped our way along between fresh masses of foliage overrun

with the grape and smaller flowering vines, the surface was so calm,

and both air and water so transparent, that the flight of a kingfisher

or robin over the river was as distinctly seen reflected in the water

below as in the air above. The birds seemed to flit through submerged

groves, alighting on the yielding sprays, and their clear notes to come

up from below. We were uncertain whether the water floated the land, or

the land held the water in its bosom. It was such a season, in short,

as that in which one of our Concord poets sailed on its stream, and

sung its quiet glories.

“There is an inward voice, that in the stream

Sends forth its spirit to the listening ear,

And in a calm content it floweth on,

Like wisdom, welcome with its own respect.

Clear in its breast lie all these beauteous thoughts,

It doth receive the green and graceful trees,

And the gray rocks smile in its peaceful arms.”

And more he sung, but too serious for our page. For every oak and birch

too growing on the hill-top, as well as for these elms and willows, we

knew that there was a graceful ethereal and ideal tree making down from

the roots, and sometimes Nature in high tides brings her mirror to its

foot and makes it visible. The stillness was intense and almost

conscious, as if it were a natural Sabbath, and we fancied that the

morning was the evening of a celestial day. The air was so elastic and

crystalline that it had the same effect on the landscape that a glass

has on a picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and perfection. The

landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and

fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and

uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon,

and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery

to hang over fairy-land. The world seemed decked for some holiday or

prouder pageantry, with silken streamers flying, and the course of our

lives to wind on before us like a green lane into a country maze, at

the season when fruit-trees are in blossom.

Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and

distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at

least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as

objects in the desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a

limitless horizon. Character always secures for itself this advantage,

and is thus distinct and unrelated to near or trivial objects, whether

things or persons. On this same stream a maiden once sailed in my boat,

thus unattended but by invisible guardians, and as she sat in the prow

there was nothing but herself between the steersman and the sky. I

could then say with the poet,—

“Sweet falls the summer air

Over her frame who sails with me;

Her way like that is beautifully free,

Her nature far more rare,

And is her constant heart of virgin purity.”

At evening still the very stars seem but this maiden’s emissaries and

reporters of her progress.

Low in the eastern sky

Is set thy glancing eye;

And though its gracious light

Ne’er riseth to my sight,

Yet every star that climbs

Above the gnarled limbs

Of yonder hill,

Conveys thy gentle will.

Believe I knew thy thought,

And that the zephyrs brought

Thy kindest wishes through,

As mine they bear to you,

That some attentive cloud

Did pause amid the crowd

Over my head,

While gentle things were said.

Believe the thrushes sung,

And that the flower-bells rung,

That herbs exhaled their scent,

And beasts knew what was meant,

The trees a welcome waved,

And lakes their margins laved,

When thy free mind

To my retreat did wind.

It was a summer eve,

The air did gently heave

While yet a low-hung cloud

Thy eastern skies did shroud;

The lightning’s silent gleam,

Startling my drowsy dream,

Seemed like the flash

Under thy dark eyelash.

Still will I strive to be

As if thou wert with me;

Whatever path I take,

It shall be for thy sake,

Of gentle slope and wide,

As thou wert by my side,

Without a root

To trip thy gentle foot.

I’ll walk with gentle pace,

And choose the smoothest place

And careful dip the oar,

And shun the winding shore,

And gently steer my boat

Where water-lilies float,

And cardinal flowers

Stand in their sylvan bowers.

It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like

surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so

faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for

only Nature may exaggerate herself. The shallowest still water is

unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there is more

than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running aground. We notice

that it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free and

abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to see

the river bottom merely; and so are there manifold visions in the

direction of every object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens

from their surface. Some men have their eyes naturally intended to the

one and some to the other object.

“A man that looks on glass,

On it may stay his eye,

Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass,

And the heavens espy.”

Two men in a skiff, whom we passed hereabouts, floating buoyantly amid

the reflections of the trees, like a feather in mid-air, or a leaf

which is wafted gently from its twig to the water without turning over,

seemed still in their element, and to have very delicately availed

themselves of the natural laws. Their floating there was a beautiful

and successful experiment in natural philosophy, and it served to

ennoble in our eyes the art of navigation; for as birds fly and fishes

swim, so these men sailed. It reminded us how much fairer and nobler

all the actions of man might be, and that our life in its whole economy

might be as beautiful as the fairest works of art or nature.

The sun lodged on the old gray cliffs, and glanced from every pad; the

bulrushes and flags seemed to rejoice in the delicious light and air;

the meadows were a-drinking at their leisure; the frogs sat meditating,

all sabbath thoughts, summing up their week, with one eye out on the

golden sun, and one toe upon a reed, eying the wondrous universe in

which they act their part; the fishes swam more staid and soberly, as

maidens go to church; shoals of golden and silver minnows rose to the

surface to behold the heavens, and then sheered off into more sombre

aisles; they swept by as if moved by one mind, continually gliding past

each other, and yet preserving the form of their battalion unchanged,

as if they were still embraced by the transparent membrane which held

the spawn; a young band of brethren and sisters trying their new fins;

now they wheeled, now shot ahead, and when we drove them to the shore

and cut them off, they dexterously tacked and passed underneath the

boat. Over the old wooden bridges no traveller crossed, and neither the

river nor the fishes avoided to glide between the abutments.

Here was a village not far off behind the woods, Billerica, settled not

long ago, and the children still bear the names of the first settlers

in this late “howling wilderness”; yet to all intents and purposes it

is as old as Fernay or as Mantua, an old gray town where men grow old

and sleep already under moss-grown monuments,—outgrow their usefulness.

This is ancient Billerica, (Villarica?) now in its dotage, named from

the English Billericay, and whose Indian name was Shawshine. I never

heard that it was young. See, is not nature here gone to decay, farms

all run out, meeting-house grown gray and racked with age? If you would

know of its early youth, ask those old gray rocks in the pasture. It

has a bell that sounds sometimes as far as Concord woods; I have heard

that,—ay, hear it now. No wonder that such a sound startled the

dreaming Indian, and frightened his game, when the first bells were

swung on trees, and sounded through the forest beyond the plantations

of the white man. But to-day I like best the echo amid these cliffs and

woods. It is no feeble imitation, but rather its original, or as if

some rural Orpheus played over the strain again to show how it should

sound.

Dong, sounds the brass in the east,

As if to a funeral feast,

But I like that sound the best

Out of the fluttering west.

The steeple ringeth a knell,

But the fairies’ silvery bell

Is the voice of that gentle folk,

Or else the horizon that spoke.

Its metal is not of brass,

But air, and water, and glass,

And under a cloud it is swung,

And by the wind it is rung.

When the steeple tolleth the noon,

It soundeth not so soon,

Yet it rings a far earlier hour,

And the sun has not reached its tower.

On the other hand, the road runs up to Carlisle, city of the woods,

which, if it is less civil, is the more natural. It does well hold the

earth together. It gets laughed at because it is a small town, I know,

but nevertheless it is a place where great men may be born any day, for

fair winds and foul blow right on over it without distinction. It has a

meeting-house and horse-sheds, a tavern and a blacksmith’s shop, for

centre, and a good deal of wood to cut and cord yet. And

“Bedford, most noble Bedford,

I shall not thee forget.”

History has remembered thee; especially that meek and humble petition

of thy old planters, like the wailing of the Lord’s own people, “To the

gentlemen, the selectmen” of Concord, praying to be erected into a

separate parish. We can hardly credit that so plaintive a psalm

resounded but little more than a century ago along these Babylonish

waters. “In the extreme difficult seasons of heat and cold,” said they,

“we were ready to say of the Sabbath, Behold what a weariness is

it.”—“Gentlemen, if our seeking to draw off proceed from any

disaffection to our present Reverend Pastor, or the Christian Society

with whom we have taken such sweet counsel together, and walked unto

the house of God in company, then hear us not this day, but we greatly

desire, if God please, to be eased of our burden on the Sabbath, the

travel and fatigue thereof, that the word of God may be nigh to us,

near to our houses and in our hearts, that we and our little ones may

serve the Lord. We hope that God, who stirred up the spirit of Cyrus to

set forward temple work, has stirred us up to ask, and will stir you up

to grant, the prayer of our petition; so shall your humble petitioners

ever pray, as in duty bound—” And so the temple work went forward here

to a happy conclusion. Yonder in Carlisle the building of the temple

was many wearisome years delayed, not that there was wanting of Shittim

wood, or the gold of Ophir, but a site therefor convenient to all the

worshippers; whether on “Buttrick’s Plain,” or rather on “Poplar

Hill.”—It was a tedious question.

In this Billerica solid men must have lived, select from year to year;

a series of town clerks, at least; and there are old records that you

may search. Some spring the white man came, built him a house, and made

a clearing here, letting in the sun, dried up a farm, piled up the old

gray stones in fences, cut down the pines around his dwelling, planted

orchard seeds brought from the old country, and persuaded the civil

apple-tree to blossom next to the wild pine and the juniper, shedding

its perfume in the wilderness. Their old stocks still remain. He culled

the graceful elm from out the woods and from the river-side, and so

refined and smoothed his village plot. He rudely bridged the stream,

and drove his team afield into the river meadows, cut the wild grass,

and laid bare the homes of beaver, otter, muskrat, and with the

whetting of his scythe scared off the deer and bear. He set up a mill,

and fields of English grain sprang in the virgin soil. And with his

grain he scattered the seeds of the dandelion and the wild trefoil over

the meadows, mingling his English flowers with the wild native ones.

The bristling burdock, the sweet-scented catnip, and the humble yarrow

planted themselves along his woodland road, they too seeking “freedom

to worship God” in their way. And thus he plants a town. The white

man’s mullein soon reigned in Indian cornfields, and sweet-scented

English grasses clothed the new soil. Where, then, could the Red Man

set his foot? The honey-bee hummed through the Massachusetts woods, and

sipped the wild-flowers round the Indian’s wigwam, perchance unnoticed,

when, with prophetic warning, it stung the Red child’s hand, forerunner

of that industrious tribe that was to come and pluck the wild-flower of

his race up by the root.

The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with a load of thought, with a

slumbering intelligence as a fire raked up, knowing well what he knows,

not guessing but calculating; strong in community, yielding obedience

to authority; of experienced race; of wonderful, wonderful common

sense; dull but capable, slow but persevering, severe but just, of

little humor but genuine; a laboring man, despising game and sport;

building a house that endures, a framed house. He buys the Indian’s

moccasins and baskets, then buys his hunting-grounds, and at length

forgets where he is buried and ploughs up his bones. And here town

records, old, tattered, time-worn, weather-stained chronicles, contain

the Indian sachem’s mark perchance, an arrow or a beaver, and the few

fatal words by which he deeded his hunting-grounds away. He comes with

a list of ancient Saxon, Norman, and Celtic names, and strews them up

and down this river,—Framingham, Sudbury, Bedford, Carlisle, Billerica,

Chelmsford,—and this is New Angle-land, and these are the New West

Saxons whom the Red Men call, not Angle-ish or English, but Yengeese,

and so at last they are known for Yankees.

When we were opposite to the middle of Billerica, the fields on either

hand had a soft and cultivated English aspect, the village spire being

seen over the copses which skirt the river, and sometimes an orchard

straggled down to the water-side, though, generally, our course this

forenoon was the wildest part of our voyage. It seemed that men led a

quiet and very civil life there. The inhabitants were plainly

cultivators of the earth, and lived under an organized political

government. The school-house stood with a meek aspect, entreating a

long truce to war and savage life. Every one finds by his own

experience, as well as in history, that the era in which men cultivate

the apple, and the amenities of the garden, is essentially different

from that of the hunter and forest life, and neither can displace the

other without loss. We have all had our day-dreams, as well as more

prophetic nocturnal vision; but as for farming, I am convinced that my

genius dates from an older era than the agricultural. I would at least

strike my spade into the earth with such careless freedom but accuracy

as the woodpecker his bill into a tree. There is in my nature,

methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness. I know of no

redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and

when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground. What have I to do

with ploughs? I cut another furrow than you see. Where the off ox

treads, there is it not, it is farther off; where the nigh ox walks, it

will not be, it is nigher still. If corn fails, my crop fails not, and

what are drought and rain to me? The rude Saxon pioneer will sometimes

pine for that refinement and artificial beauty which are English, and

love to hear the sound of such sweet and classical names as the

Pentland and Malvern Hills, the Cliffs of Dover and the Trosachs,

Richmond, Derwent, and Winandermere, which are to him now instead of

the Acropolis and Parthenon, of Baiæ, and Athens with its sea-walls,

and Arcadia and Tempe.

Greece, who am I that should remember thee,

Thy Marathon and thy Thermopylæ?

Is my life vulgar, my fate mean,

Which on these golden memories can lean?

We are apt enough to be pleased with such books as Evelyn’s Sylva,

Acetarium, and Kalendarium Hortense, but they imply a relaxed nerve in

the reader. Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and

freedom of the forest and the outlaw. There may be an excess of

cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes

pathetic. A highly cultivated man,—all whose bones can be bent! whose

heaven-born virtues are but good manners! The young pines springing up

in the cornfields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact. We

talk of civilizing the Indian, but that is not the name for his

improvement. By the wary independence and aloofness of his dim forest

life he preserves his intercourse with his native gods, and is admitted

from time to time to a rare and peculiar society with Nature. He has

glances of starry recognition to which our saloons are strangers. The

steady illumination of his genius, dim only because distant, is like

the faint but satisfying light of the stars compared with the dazzling

but ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. The Society-Islanders

had their day-born gods, but they were not supposed to be “of equal

antiquity with the _atua fauau po_, or night-born gods.” It is true,

there are the innocent pleasures of country life, and it is sometimes

pleasant to make the earth yield her increase, and gather the fruits in

their season, but the heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter

retirements and more rugged paths. It will have its garden-plots and

its _parterres_ elsewhere than on the earth, and gather nuts and

berries by the way for its subsistence, or orchard fruits with such

heedlessness as berries. We would not always be soothing and taming

nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but sometimes ride the horse

wild and chase the buffalo. The Indian’s intercourse with Nature is at

least such as admits of the greatest independence of each. If he is

somewhat of a stranger in her midst, the gardener is too much of a

familiar. There is something vulgar and foul in the latter’s closeness

to his mistress, something noble and cleanly in the former’s distance.

In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length,

and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes,

“Some nation yet shut in

With hills of ice.”

There are other, savager, and more primeval aspects of nature than our

poets have sung. It is only white man’s poetry. Homer and Ossian even

can never revive in London or Boston. And yet behold how these cities

are refreshed by the mere tradition, or the imperfectly transmitted

fragrance and flavor of these wild fruits. If we could listen but for

an instant to the chant of the Indian muse, we should understand why he

will not exchange his savageness for civilization. Nations are not

whimsical. Steel and blankets are strong temptations; but the Indian

does well to continue Indian.

After sitting in my chamber many days, reading the poets, I have been

out early on a foggy morning, and heard the cry of an owl in a

neighboring wood as from a nature behind the common, unexplored by

science or by literature. None of the feathered race has yet realized

my youthful conceptions of the woodland depths. I had seen the red

Election-bird brought from their recesses on my comrades’ string, and

fancied that their plumage would assume stranger and more dazzling

colors, like the tints of evening, in proportion as I advanced farther

into the darkness and solitude of the forest. Still less have I seen

such strong and wilderness tints on any poet’s string.

These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more

venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its

primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun

and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and

invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg,

or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have

been gradually learned and taught. According to Gower,—

“And Iadahel, as saith the boke,

Firste made nette, and fishes toke.

Of huntyng eke he fond the chace,

Whiche nowe is knowe in many place;

A tent of clothe, with corde and stake,

He sette up first, and did it make.”