Just lovely...

In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror,

set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer.

Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, 

perchance, lies on the surface of the earth.

Sky water.

It needs no fence.

Nations come and go without defiling it.

It is a mirror which no stone can crack, 
whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; 

no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh;

a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, 
swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush,

this the light dust-cloth, which retains no breath that is breathed on it, 
but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, 
and be reflected in its bosom still.

~Thoreau, Walden

From Wherever You Go, There You Are