When reading this chapter, one immediately notes how much more vigorous the narrator has become. In "Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors" and in "Winter Animals," we saw him straining to find sources of spiritual stimulation; with the beginning of this chapter, his quest seems to be over. He is inspired once again by the "serene and satisfied face of Nature." Upon receiving new inspiration, his first actions are symbolically revealing. He goes to the pond (the symbol for his self) and cuts away the ice ("cuts through" his wintry psychological state). Looking into the depths of the pond, thus metaphorically looking within his soul, he rejoices over a world of incomparable beauty. What he sees in the literal pond is pickerel possessing "transcendent beauty." These pickerel signify the narrator's own thoughts which he finds to be transcendently beautiful.
In discussing the depth of Walden and how Walden is like a "deep" symbol, the narrator again indicates that his imagination was "thawing" and was now active. His concluding statements about Walden ice being shipped to southern climates and about mixing Ganges water with Walden water indicate that his imagination is stimulated. Metaphorically, he depicts a feeling of oneness with the people of different countries, with the thought of different cultures and philosophies, and with the people and thought of past centuries; He is depicting a feeling of integration with all things on earth — in the past and present.
Yet winter is still upon the narrator; he is not totally "awake." He tells us that Walden still has its "eyelids" closed; accordingly, his soul has still not regained its full spiritual vision. Spring, in the literal and the symbolic sense, has not yet come. And the narrator looks forward to and longs for its arrival: "In thirty days more, probably, I shall look from the same window on the pure sea-green Walden water."
