Gala-Days | Page 6

the perfect June of hope and beauty and utter joy? Where
is the June? Has she lost her way among the narrow, interminable
defiles of your crooked old city streets? Go out and find her! You do
not want her there. No blade nor blossom will spring from your dingy
brick, nor your dull, dead stone, though you prison her there for a
thousand years of wandering. Take her by the hand tenderly, and bid

her forth into the waiting country, which will give her a queenly
reception, and laurels worth the wearing. Have you fallen in love with
her-- on the Potomac, O soldiers? Are you wooing her with honeyed
words on the bloody soil of Virginia? Is she tranced by your glittering
sword-shine in ransomed Tennessee? Is she floating on a lotus-leaf in
Florida lagoons? Has she drunk Nepenthe in the orange-groves? Is she
chasing golden apples under the magnolias? Are you toying with the
tangles of her hair in the bright sea-foam? O, rouse her from her trance,
loose the fetters from her lovely limbs, and speed her to our Northern
skies, that moan her long delay.
Or is she frightened by the thunders of the cannonade sounding from
shore to shore, and wakening the wild echoes? Does she fear to breast
our bristling bayonets? Is she stifled by the smoke of powder? Is she
crouching down Caribbean shores, terror-stricken and pallid? Sweet
June, fear not! The flash of loyal steel will only light you along your
Northern road. Beauty and innocence have nothing to dread from the
sword a patriot wields. The storm that rends the heavens will make
earth doubly fair. Your pathway shall lie over Delectable Mountains,
and through vinelands of Beulah. Come quickly, tread softly, and from
your bountiful bosom scatter seeds as you come, that daisies and violets
may softly shine, and sweetly twine with the amaranth and immortelle
that spring already from heroes' hearts buried in soldiers' graves.
"But there is no use in placarding her," said Halicarnassus. "We shall
have no warm weather till the eclipse is over."
"So ho!" I said. "Having exhausted every other pretext for delay, you
bring out an eclipse! and pray when is this famous affair to come off?"
"Tomorrow if the weather prove favorable, if not, on the first fair
night."
Then indeed I set my house in order. Here was something definite and
trustworthy. First an eclipse, then a book, and yet I pitied the moon as I
walked home that night. She came up the heavens so round and radiant,
so glorious in her majesty, so confident in her strength, so sure of
triumphal march across the shining sky; not knowing that a great black

shadow loomed right athwart her path to swallow her up. She never
dreamed that all her royal beauty should pass behind a pall, that all her
glory should be demeaned by pitiless eclipse, and her dome of delight
become the valley of humiliation! Is there no help? I said. Can no hand
lead her gently another way? Can no voice warn her of the black
shadow that lies in ambuscade? None. Just as the young girl leaves her
tender home, and goes fearless to her future,--to the future which brings
sadness for her smiling, and patience for her hope, and pain for her
bloom, and the cold requital of kindness, or the unrequital of coldness
for her warmth of love, so goes the moon, unconscious and serene, to
meet her fate. But at least I will watch with her. Trundle up to the
window here, old lounge! you are almost as good as a grandmother.
Steady there! broken-legged table. You have gone limping ever since I
knew you; don't fail me tonight. Shine softly, Kerosena, next of kin to
the sun, true monarch of mundane lights! calmly superior to the
flickering of all the fluids, and the ghastliness of all the gases, though it
must be confessed you don't hold out half as long as you used when
first your yellow banner was unfurled. Shine softly tonight, and light
my happy feet through the Walden woods, along the Walden shores,
where a philosopher sits in solitary state. He shall keep me awake by
the Walden shore till the moon and the shadow meet. How tranquil sits
the philosopher, how grandly rings the man! Here, in his homespun
house, the squirrels click under his feet, the woodchucks devour his
beans, and the loon laughs on the lake. Here rich men come, and cannot
hide their lankness and their poverty. Here poor men come, and their
gold shines through their rags. Hither comes the poet, and the house is
too narrow for their thoughts, and the rough walls ring with lusty
laughter. O happy Walden wood and woodland lake, did you