It was a sultry day, and the sun was exercising his power over the
whole ice field. I sat down by a great ice block, about fifty feet
long, to interrogate it, and see what I could make of it, by a cool,
confidential proximity and examination. The ice was porous and spongy,
as I have seen it on the shores of the Connecticut, when beginning to
thaw out under the influence of a spring sun. I could see the little
drops of water percolating in a thousand tiny streams through it, and
dropping down on every side. Putting my ear to it, I could hear a fine
musical trill and trickle, and that still small click and stir, as of
melting ice, which showed that it was surely and gradually giving way,
and flowing back again.
Drop by drop the cold iceberg was changing into a stream, to flow down
the sides of the valley, no longer an image of coldness and death, but
bearing fertility and beauty on its tide. And as I looked abroad over
all the rifted field of ice, I could see that the same change was
gradually going on throughout. In every blue ravine you can hear the
clink of dropping water, and those great defiant blocks of ice, which
seem frozen with uplifted warlike hands, are all softening in that
beneficent light, and destined to pass away in that benignant change.
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