It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the
sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our
day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman
intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as
its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the
human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday
thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine
intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of
philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.
As we said before, the Concord is a dead stream, but its scenery
is the more suggestive to the contemplative voyager, and this day
its water was fuller of reflections than our pages even. Just
before it reaches the falls in Billerica, it is contracted, and
becomes swifter and shallower, with a yellow pebbly bottom,
hardly passable for a canal-boat, leaving the broader and more
stagnant portion above like a lake among the hills. All through
the Concord, Bedford, and Billerica meadows we had heard no
murmur from its stream, except where some tributary runnel
tumbled in,--
Some tumultuous little rill,
Purling round its storied pebble,
Tinkling to the selfsame tune,
From September until June,
Which no drought doth e'er enfeeble.
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