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for a Michael Angelo.

  The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be
discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. Paddling over
it, you may see, many feet beneath the surface, the schools of perch
and shiners, perhaps only an inch long, yet the former easily
distinguished by their transverse bars, and you think that they must
be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter,
many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through the ice in order
to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed my axe back on to
the ice, but, as if some evil genius had directed it, it slid four
or five rods directly into one of the holes, where the water was
twenty-five feet deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down on the ice and
looked through the hole, until I saw the axe a little on one side,
standing on its head, with its helve erect and gently swaying to and
fro with the pulse of the pond; and there it might have stood erect
and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off, if I had
not disturbed it. Making another hole directly over it with an ice
chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I could
find in the neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I
attached to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over
the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and
so pulled the axe out again.

  The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones
like paving-stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so
steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over
your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would
be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite
side. Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a casual
observer would say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of
noticeable plants, except in the little meadows recently overflowed,
which do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not
detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or white, but
only a few small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a
water-target or two; all which however a bather might not perceive;
and these plants are clean and bright like the element they grow in.
The stones extend a rod or two into the water, and then the bottom
is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where there is usually a
little sediment, probably from the decay of the leaves which have been
wafted on to it so many successive falls, and a bright green weed is
brought up on anchors even in midwinter.

  We have one other pond just like this, White Pond, in Nine Acre
Corner, about two and a half miles westerly; but, though I am
acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen miles of this
centre I do not know a third of this pure and well-like character.
Successive nations perchance have drank at, admired, and fathomed
it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid as
ever. Not an intermitting spring! Perhaps on that spring morning
when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in
existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain
accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered with myriads
of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such
pure lakes sufficed them. Even then it had commenced to rise and fall,
and had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now
wear, and obtained a patent of Heaven to be the only Walden Pond in
the world and distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how many
unremembered nations' literatures this has been the Castalian
Fountain? or what nymphs presided over it in the Golden Age? It is a
gem of the first water which Concord wears in her coronet.

  Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some trace
of their footsteps. I have been surprised to detect encircling the
pond, even where a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a
narrow shelf-like path in the steep hillside, alternately rising and
falling, approaching and receding from the water's edge, as old
probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal
hunters, and still from time to time unmittingly trodden by the
present occupants of the land. This is particularly distinct to one
standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light
snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line,
unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile
off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable
close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type
alto-relievo. The ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be
built here may still preserve some trace of this.

  The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within
what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know.
It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though
not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I can remember
when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five
feet higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow sand-bar
running into it, with very deep water on one side, on which I helped
boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about the
year 1824, which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years;
and, on the other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity
when I told them, that a few years later I was accustomed to fish from
a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the only
shore they knew, which place was long since converted into a meadow.
But the pond has risen steadily for two years, and now, in the
summer of '52, is just five feet higher than when I lived there, or as
high as it was thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the
meadow. This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or
seven feet; and yet the water shed by the surrounding hills is
insignificant in amount, and this overflow must be referred to
causes which affect the deep springs. This same summer the pond has
begun to fall again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether
periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its
accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of two falls,
and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will
again be as low as I have ever known it. Flint's Pond, a mile
eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and
outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize with
Walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the same time
with the latter. The same is true, as far as my observation goes, of
White Pond.

  This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use at
least; the water standing at this great height for a year or more,
though it makes it difficult to walk round it, kills the shrubs and
trees which have sprung up about its edge since the last rise- pitch
pines, birches, alders, aspens, and others- and, falling again, leaves
an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many ponds and all waters which are
subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is
lowest. On the side of the pond next my house a row of pitch pines,
fifteen feet high, has been killed and tipped over as if by a lever,
and thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their size indicates
how many years have elapsed since the last rise to this height. By
this fluctuation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the