202 
WALDEN. 
as where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated 
field abuts on it. The trees have ample room to ex¬ 
pand on the water side, and each sends forth its most 
vigorous branch in that direction. There Nature has 
woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just 
gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the 
highest trees. There are few traces of man’s hand to 
be seen. The water laves the shore as it did a thou¬ 
sand years ago. 
A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expres¬ 
sive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the 
beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The 
fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes 
which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around 
are its overhanging brows. 
Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end 
of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a 
slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I 
have seen whence came the expression, “the glassy 
surface of a lake.” When you invert your head, it 
looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across 
the valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods, 
separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. 
You would think that you could walk dry under it to 
the opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim 
over might perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive 
below the line, as it were by mistake, and are unde¬ 
ceived. As you look over the pond westward you are 
obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes 
against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are 
equally bright; and if, between the two, you survey its 
surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, ex¬ 
cept where the skater insects, at equal intervals scat- 
