Packed in my mind lie all the clothes Which outward nature wears, For, as its hourly fashions change, It all things else repairs. My eyes look inward, not without, And I but hear myself, And this new wealth which I have got Is part of my own pelf. For while I look for change abroad, I can no difference find, Till some new ray of peace uncalled Lumines my inmost mind, As, when the sun streams through the wood, Upon a winter's morn, Where'er his silent beams may stray The murky night is gone. How could the patient pine have known The morning breeze would come, Or simple flowers anticipate The insect's noonday hum, Till that new light with morning cheer From far streamed through the aisles, And nimbly told the forest trees For many stretching miles?[298] _[Dec.] 12. Sunday._ All music is only a sweet striving to express character. Now that lately I have heard of some traits in the character of a fair and earnest maiden whom I had only known superficially, but who has gone hence to make herself more known by distance, they sound like strains of a wild harp music. They make all persons and places who had thus forgotten her to seem late and behindhand. Every maiden conceals a fairer flower and more luscious fruit than any calyx in the field, and if she go with averted face, confiding in her own purity and high resolves, she will make the heavens retrospective, and all nature will humbly confess its queen.[299] There is apology enough for all the deficiency and shortcoming in the world in the patient waiting of any bud of character to unfold itself. Only character can command our reverent love. It is all mysteries in itself. What is it gilds the trees and clouds And paints the heavens so gay, But yonder fast-abiding light With its unchanging ray? I've felt within my inmost soul Such cheerful morning news, In the horizon of my mind I've seen such morning hues, As in the twilight of the dawn, When the first birds awake, Is heard within some silent wood Where they the small twigs break; Or in the eastern skies is seen Before the sun appears, Foretelling of the summer heats Which far away he bears. P. M. Walden.—I seem to discern the very form of the wind when, blowing over the hills, it falls in broad flakes upon the surface of the pond, this subtle element obeying the same law with the least subtle. As it falls it spreads itself like a mass of lead dropped upon an anvil. I cannot help being encouraged by this blithe activity in the elements in these degenerate days of men. Who hears the rippling of the rivers will not utterly despair of anything. The wind in the wood yonder sounds like an incessant waterfall, the water dashing and roaring among rocks.