THOREAU'S WALDEN 69 



old growth that yearly adds to its girth and 

 stature. 



Nor, one fancies, need these trees again fear 

 the sweep of the woodchopper's axe. The spirit 

 of reverence for its shores, which through the 

 one-time hermit of Walden has spread to us all, 

 should prevent that. For now the pond is much 

 as Thoreau remembered it had been in his boy- 

 hood, walled in by dense forests, a place of echoes. 

 Your spoken word comes back to you from this 

 shore and from that, refined and made more 

 sonorous, as if the wood gods would fain teach 

 you oratory and had taken your phrase into their 

 own mouths and put it forth again as an example. 

 To your ears it comes again sweetened with the 

 gentle essences of juniper, birch and sassafras, 

 rich with the melodies taught to bare boughs by 

 winter winds. In the haze of the August noon 

 these other shores are distant to the eye. The 

 sight must swim a long way through the quiver- 

 ing air to reach one or the other. The hearing, 

 thanks to the kindly offices of the wood gods, 

 leaps the space at a bound. 

 The kingfisher seems as much a familiar of the 



