Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/104

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

To journey for his marriage,
And return with such an host,
That wedded might be least and most.

Which barge was as a man's thought,
After his pleasure to him brought,
The queene her selfe accustomed aye
In the same barge to play,
It needed neither mast ne rother
I have not heard of such another,
No maister for the gouvernaunce,
Hie sayled by thought and pleasaunce,
Without labour, east and west,
All was one, calme or tempest.

So we sailed this afternoon. "It is beautiful, therefore," said Pythagoras, "when prosperity is present with intellect, and when sailing, as it were, with a prosperous wind, actions are performed looking to virtue, just as a pilot looks to the motions of the stars." Without any design or effort of ours, the ripples curled away in the wake of our boat, like ringlets from the head of a child, while we went serenely on our way. So always, in the performing of our proper work, the forms of beauty fall naturally around our path, like the curled shavings which drop from the plane, or the borings from the auger; and

[56]