The farmers, I find, think the mullein a mean unworthy weed,
but I have grown to a fondness for it. Every object has its lesson,
enclosing the suggestion of everything else--and lately I sometimes
think all is concentrated for me in these hardy, yellow-flower'd
weeds. As I come down the lane early in the morning, I pause before
their soft wool-like fleece and stem and broad leaves, glittering with
countless diamonds. Annually for three summers now, they and I have
silently return'd together; at such long intervals I stand or sit
among them, musing--and woven with the rest, of so many hours and
moods of partial rehabilitation--of my sane or sick spirit, here as
near at peace as it can be.
DISTANT SOUNDS
The axe of the wood-cutter, the measured thud of a single
threshing-flail, the crowing of chanticleer in the barn-yard, (with
invariable responses from other barn-yards,) and the lowing of
cattle--but most of all, or far or near, the wind--through the high
tree-tops, or through low bushes, laving one's face and hands so
gently, this balmy-bright noon, the coolest for a long time, (Sept.
2)--I will not call it _sighing_, for to me it is always a firm, sane,
cheery expression, through a monotone, giving many varieties, or swift
or slow, or dense or delicate. The wind in the patch of pine woods off
there--how sibilant. Or at sea, I can imagine it this moment, tossing
the waves, with spirits of foam flying far, and the free whistle, and
the scent of the salt--and that vast paradox somehow with all its
action and restlessness conveying a sense of eternal rest.
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