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.