We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,--at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on... the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have just come from the beach (to find your letter), and I like it much. Everything there is on a grand and generous scale,--sea...weed, water, and sand; and even the dead fishes, horses, and hogs have a rank, luxuriant odor; great shad-nets spread to dry; crabs and horseshoes crawling over the sand; clumsy boats, only for service, dancing like sea-fowl over the surf, and ships afar off going about their business.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh, to have a little house! To own the hearth and stool and all!... The heaped-up sods upon the fire, The pile of turf against the wall!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, an...d the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore,... And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand-- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep--while I weep!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sometimes we lodged at an inn in the woods, where trout-fishers from distant cities had arrived before us, and where, to our aston...ishment, the settlers dropped in at nightfall to have a chat and hear the news, though there was but one road, and no other house was visible,--as if they had come out of the earth. There we sometimes read old newspapers, who never before read new ones, and in the rustle of their leaves heard the dashing of the surf along the Atlantic shore, instead of the sough of the wind among the pines. But then walking had given us an appetite even for the least palatable and nutritious food.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Though I am not much acquainted with the works of Goethe, I should say that it was one of his chief excellences as a writer, that ...he was satisfied with giving an exact description of things as they appeared to him, and their effect upon him. Most travelers have not self-respect enough to do this simply, and make objects and events stand around them as the centre, but still imagine more favorable positions and relations than the actual ones, and so we get no valuable report from them at all. In his "Italian Travels" Goethe jogs along at a snail's pace, but always mindful that the earth is beneath and the heavens are above him. His Italy is not merely the fatherland of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and scene of splendid ruins, but a solid turf-clad soil, daily shined on by the sun, and nightly by the moon. Even the few showers are faithfully recorded. He speaks as an unconcerned spectator, whose object is faithfully to describe what he sees, and that, for the most part, in the order in which he sees it. Even his reflections do not interfere with his descriptions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving; ducks by... the hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in the raw wind, just ready to rise, and now going off with a clatter and a whistling like riggers straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with reefed wings, or else circling round first, with all their paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you before they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them by that you know of, their labored homes rising here and there like haystacks; and countless mice and moles and winged titmice along the sunny, windy shore; cranberries tossed on the waves and heaving up on the beach, their little red skiffs beating among the alders;Msuch healthy natural tumult as proves the last day is not yet at hand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There was so much of the Indian accent resounding through his English, so much of the "bow-arrow tang" as my neighbor calls it....... It was a wild and refreshing sound, like that of the wind among the pines, or the booming of the surf on the shore.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »