The Earth's Eye

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are is overhanging brows.

--Henry David Thoreau: Walden; Or, Life in the Woods (121)

What Birds are Really Saying

"They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions."

--Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (81)