Walden

cloud-compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of
his train; when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his
snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire
and smoke from his nostrils, (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon
they will put into the new Mythology I don’t know), it seems as if the
earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems,
and men made the elements their servants for noble ends! If the cloud
that hangs over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as
beneficent as that which floats over the farmer’s fields, then the
elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their
errands and be their escort.

I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do
the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. Their train of
clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to
heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a
minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train
beside which the petty train of cars which hugs the earth is but the
barb of the spear. The stabler of the iron horse was up early this