The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does. The rhyme makes even what was odd.

November 23.

6 A. M. – To Swamp Bridge Brook mouth.

The cocks are the only birds I hear, but they are a host. They crow as freshly and bravely as ever, while poets go down the stream, degenerate into science and prose.

I have not seen a flock of small birds, either tree sparrows or F. hyemalis or white-in-tails, etc., for about a fortnight. There is now no sound of early birds on the leafless trees and bushes -- willows and alders -- along this watercourse. The few that are left probably roost in the evergreen woods.

Yet I hear, or seem to hear, the faintest possible lisp or creak from some sparrow, as if from a crack in the mist-clad earth, or some ox-yoke or distant wain. I suspect that the song sparrow lingers as late, here and there alone, as any migrating bird.

By 8 o'clock the misty clouds disperse, and it turns out a pleasant, calm, and springlike morning.

The water, going down, but still spread far over the meadows, is seen from the window perfectly smooth and full of reflections.  

What lifts and lightens and makes heaven of the earth is the fact that you see the reflections of the humblest weeds against the sky, but you cannot put your head low enough to see the substance so.  The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does.

If I would preserve my relation to nature, I must make my life more moral, more pure and innocent. The problem is as precise and simple as a mathematical one. I must not live loosely, but more and more continently.

What an engineer this water is! It comes with its unerring level, and reveals all the inequalities of the meadow. The farmer may see now what route to take to get the driest and firmest ground for his hay - carts, how to cut his ditches, and where to drop more sand. It is an obvious piece of geometry in nature.

Every peculiar curve in the limbs of the trees is doubly conspicuous seen both above and beneath, yet the rhyme makes even what was odd, regular what was irregular.

For a week or more there has been no freezing day or night.

The springs and swamps are getting filled.

The Indian summer itself, said to be more remarkable in this country than elsewhere, no less than the reblossoming of certain flowers, the peep of the hylodes, and sometimes the faint warble of some birds, is the reminiscence, or rather the return, of spring, the year renewing its youth.

At 5 P. M. I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two. They were in the usual harrow form, twelve in the shorter line and twenty four in the longer, the latter abutting on the former at the fourth bird from the front. I judged hastily that the interval between the geese was about double their alar extent, and, as the last is, according to Wilson, five feet and two inches, the former may safely be called eight feet.  I hear they were fired at with a rifle from Bunker Hill the other day. This is the sixth flock I have seen or heard of since the morning of the 17th, i.e. within a week.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 23, 1853

I suspect that the song sparrow lingers as late, here and there alone, as any migrating bird. See  October 26, 1855 ("The song sparrow still sings on a button-bush."): October 27, 1853 ("These, methinks, are song sparrows flitting about, with the three spots on breast"): December 9, 1858 ("At New Bedford. See a song sparrow"): January 15, 1857 (" As I passed the south shed at the depot, observed what . . . must be a song sparrow, it having the usual marks on its breast and no bright-chestnut crown. The snow is nine or ten inches deep, and it appeared to have taken refuge in this shed, where was much bare ground exposed by removing the wood."): January 22, 1857 ("Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter"): January 28, 1857 ("Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

You see the reflections of the humblest weeds against the sky, but you cannot put your head low enough to see the substance so. The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does. See November 30, 1853 (Though frequently we could not see the real bush in the twilight against the dark bank, in the water it appeared against the sky. We were thus often enabled to steer clear of the overhanging bushes");  December 8, 1853 (“I saw from the peak the entire reflection of large white pines very distinctly against a clear white sky, though the actual tree was completely lost in night against the dark distant hillside.”); December 9, 1856 ("I perceive that more or other things are seen in the reflection than in the substance."); October 14, 1857 ("The reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition, and this may be the source of its novelty and attractiveness, and of this nature, too, may be the charm of an echo."); November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”); November 27, 1857 ("I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections . . .He says . . . 'Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection’”).

Every peculiar curve in the limbs of the trees is doubly conspicuous seen both above and beneath, yet the rhyme makes even what was odd, regular what was irregular. See April 11, 1852 (". At this season the reflections of deciduous trees are more remarkable than when they are in leaf, because, the branches being seen, they make with their reflections a more wonderful rhyme.. . .a kind of geometrical figure.")

What an engineer this water is! It comes with its unerring level . . . an obvious piece of geometry in nature. See November 11, 1855 ("At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves and, half an inch below, a white line of saw dust, eight inches above the present surface, on the upright side of a rock, both mathematically level.");. April 1, 1860 ("The river being so low, we see lines of sawdust perfectly level and parallel to one another on the side of the steep dark bank at the Hemlocks. . . .reminding you of a coarse chalk line made by snapping a string, not more than half an inch wide much of it, but more true than that would be.")

I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two. They were in the usual harrow form, . . . This is the sixth flock I have seen or heard of since the morning of the 17th, i.e . within a week. See November 18, 1854 ("Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while.”);. November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm");. November 22, 1853 ("Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also");. November 24, 1855 ("Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering"); November 30, 1857 ("The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

Weeds against the sky –

the reflection enchants us

just as an echo.