Drifting in a sultry day on the sluggish waters of the pond, I almost cease to live and begin to be. A boatman stretched on the deck of his craft and dallying with the noon would be as apt an emblem of eternity for me as the serpent with his tail in his mouth. I am never so prone to lose my identity. I am dissolved in the haze.

(cf.: Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861 (New York Review Books Classics) (p. 7). New York Review Books.