Twisting and trembling along the track, it dwindles
rapidly in the perspective, and is presently out of sight. It has left the
city and the suburbs behind, and has sought the woods and meadows; but
Nature never in the least accepts it, and rarely makes its path a part of
her landscape's loveliness. The train passes alien through all her moods
and aspects; the wounds made in her face by the road's sharp cuts and
excavations are slowest of all wounds to heal, and the iron rails remain
to the last as shackles upon her. Yet when the rails are removed, as has
happened with a non-paying track in Charlesbridge, the road inspires a
real tenderness in her. Then she bids it take or the grace that belongs to
all ruin; the grass creeps stealthily over the scarified sides of the
embankments; the golden-rod, and the purple-topped iron-weed, and the
lady's-slipper, spring up in the hollows on either side, and--I am still
thinking of that deserted railroad which runs through Charlesbridge--hide
with their leafage the empty tomato-cans and broken bottles and old boots
on the ash-heaps dumped there; Nature sets her velvety willows a waving
near, and lower than their airy tops plans a vista of trees arching above
the track, which is as wild and pretty and illusive a vista as the sunset
ever cared to look through and gild a board fence beyond.
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