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Poems of Nature

<hr class="full" /> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div> {iii}  {iv}  {v}  <h1>POEMS OF NATURE</h1> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_title.png" width-obs="359" height-obs="550" alt="POEMS OF NATURE BY·HENRY·DAVID·THOREAU· SELECTED·AND·EDITED·BY·HENRY·S·SALT AND·FRANK·B·SANBORN BOSTON·AND·NEW·YORK: HOUGHTON·MIFFLIN & CO· LONDON: JOHN·LANE· THE·BODLEY·HEAD· MDCCCXCV." /></div> {vi}  {vii}  <h2>CONTENTS</h2> <table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> <tr><td> </td><td class="rt">PAGE</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">INTRODUCTION</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">xi</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">NATURE</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">1</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">INSPIRATION</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">3</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">SIC VITA</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">10</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE FISHER’S BOY</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">14</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE ATLANTIDES</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">16</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE AURORA OF GUIDO</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">19</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">SYMPATHY</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">21</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">FRIENDSHIP</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">26</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">TRUE KINDNESS</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">31</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">TO THE MAIDEN IN THE EAST</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">32</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">FREE LOVE</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">37</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">RUMOURS FROM AN ÆOLIAN HARP</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">39</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">LINES</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">41</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">STANZAS</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">43</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">A RIVER SCENE</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">46{viii}</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">RIVER SONG</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">49</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">SOME TUMULTUOUS LITTLE RILL</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">50</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">BOAT SONG</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">51</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">TO MY BROTHER</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">52</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">STANZAS</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">56</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE INWARD MORNING</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">58</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">GREECE</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">61</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE FUNERAL BELL</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">62</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE SUMMER RAIN</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">64</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">MIST</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">68</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">SMOKE</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">69</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">HAZE</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">70</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE MOON</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">71</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE VIREO</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">72</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE POET’S DELAY</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">73</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">LINES</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">74</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">NATURE’S CHILD</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">76</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE FALL OF THE LEAF</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">77</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">SMOKE IN WINTER</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">82{ix}</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">WINTER MEMORIES</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">84</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">STANZAS WRITTEN AT WALDEN</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">86</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE THAW</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">89</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">A WINTER SCENE</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">90</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE CROW</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">93</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">TO A STRAY FOWL</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">94</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">MOUNTAINS</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">96</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE RESPECTABLE FOLKS</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">103</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">POVERTY</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">105</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">CONSCIENCE</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">107</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">PILGRIMS</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">110</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">THE DEPARTURE</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">112</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">INDEPENDENCE</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">116</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">DING DONG</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">119</td></tr> <tr><td valign="top">MY PRAYER</td><td class="rt" valign="bottom">121</td></tr> </table> {x}  {xi}  <h2>INTRODUCTION</h2> The fifty poems here brought together under the title ‘Poems of Nature’ are perhaps two-thirds of those which Thoreau preserved. Many of them were printed by him, in whole or in part, among his early contributions to Emerson’s Dial, or in his own two volumes, The Week and Walden, which were all that were issued in his lifetime. Others were given to Mr. Sanborn for publication, by Sophia Thoreau, the year after her brother’s death (several appeared in the Boston Commonwealth in 1863); or have been furnished from time to time by Mr. Blake, his literary executor. Most of Thoreau’s poems were composed early in his life, before his twenty-sixth year, ‘Just now’ he wrote in the autumn of 1841, ‘I am in the mid-sea of verses, and they actually rustle round me, as the leaves would round the head of Autumnus himself, should he thrust it{xii} up through some vales which I know; but, alas! many of them are but crisped and yellow leaves like his, I fear, and will deserve no better fate than to make mould for new harvests.’ After 1843 he seems to have written but few poems, and had destroyed perhaps as many as he had retained, because they did not meet the exacting requirements of his friend Emerson, upon whose opinion at that time he placed great reliance. This loss was regretted by Thoreau in after years, when the poetical habit had left him, for he fancied that some of the verses were better than his friend had supposed. But Emerson, who seldom changed his mind, adhered to his verdict, and while praising some of the poems highly, perhaps extravagantly, would admit but a small number of them to the slight selection which he appended to the posthumous edition of Thoreau’s Letters, edited by him in 1865; and even these were printed, in some instances, in an abbreviated and imperfect form.[1] A few other poems,{xiii} with some translations from the Greek, have lately been included by Thoreau’s Boston publishers in their volume of Miscellanies (vol. x. of the Riverside Edition, 1894). But no collection so full as the present one has ever been offered to the public. It has not been attempted to make this a complete collection of Thoreau’s poems, because, as has been well said, ‘many of them seem to be merely pendants to his prose discourse, dropped in as forcible epigrams where they are brief, and in other instances made ancillary to the idea just expressed, or to perpetuate a distinct conception that has some vital connection with the point from which it was poured forth. It is, therefore, almost an injustice to treat them separately at all.’[2] After the discontinuance of The Dial, Thoreau ceased to publish his verses as separate poems, but interpolated them, in the manner described, in his prose essays, where they form a sort of accompaniment to the thought, and from which it is in many cases impossible to detach them. That he{xiv} himself set some value on them in this connection may be gathered from a sentence in the last of his published letters, in which he writes to a correspondent: ‘I am pleased when you say that in The Week you like especially those little snatches of poetry interspersed through the book, for these I suppose are the least attractive to most readers.’ Everything that concerns a great writer has its special interest; and Thoreau’s poetry, whatever its intrinsic value may be, is full of personal significance; in fact, as Emerson remarked, ‘his biography is in his verses.’ Thus, many of these poems will be found to throw light on certain passages of his life. ‘Inspiration,’ for example, is the record of his soul’s awakening to the new impulse of transcendentalism; the stanzas on ‘Sympathy’ perhaps contain in a thinly disguised form the story of his youthful love, and the sacrifice which he imposed on himself to avoid rivalry with his brother; the lines ‘To my Brother’ refer to the sudden and tragic death of John Thoreau in 1842; and ‘The Departure’ is believed to be the poem in which Henry Thoreau, when leaving in{xv} 1843 the home of Emerson, where he had lived for two years, took farewell of his friends. The numerous other allusions to the life and scenery of Concord, with which Thoreau’s own life was so closely blended, require no comment or explanation. Thoreau’s view of the poetic character, as stated by him in The Week, is illustrative of his own position. ‘A true poem,’ he says, ‘is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art: one seeks food for nutriment, the other for flavor; one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate.’ There can be no doubt to which of these classes Thoreau himself belongs. If metrical skill be insisted on as an indispensable condition of poetry, he can hardly be ranked among the poets; nor, where this criterion was dominant, was it surprising that, as one of his contemporaries tells us,[3] with reference to his verses in The Dial, ‘an unquenchable laughter, like that of the gods at Vulca{xvi}n’s limping, went up over his ragged and halting lines.’ But in the appreciation of poetry there is a good deal more to be considered than this; and, as the same writer has remarked, there is ‘a frank and unpretending nobleness’ in many of Thoreau’s verses, distinguished as they are, at their best, by their ripe fulness of thought, quiet gravity of tone, and epigrammatic terseness of expression. The title of poet could hardly be withheld from the author of such truly powerful pieces as ‘The Fall of the Leaf,’ ‘Winter Memories,’ ‘Smoke in Winter,’ or ‘Inspiration.’ Nor should it be forgotten that Thoreau was always regarded as a poet by those who were associated with him. ‘Poet-Naturalist’ was the suggestive title which Ellery Channing applied to him; and Hawthorne remarked that ‘his thoughts seem to measure and attune themselves into spontaneous verse, as they rightfully may, since there is real poetry in them.’ Even Emerson’s final estimate was far from unappreciative. ‘His poetry,’ he wrote in his biographical sketch, ‘might be bad or good; he no doubt wanted a lyric facility and technical skill, but he{xvii} had the source of poetry in his spiritual perception. His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not yet run pure—is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey. But if he want lyric fineness and technical merits, if he have not the poetic temperament, he never lacks the causal thought, showing that his genius was better than his talent.’ Perhaps what Thoreau said of Quarles, one of that school of gnomic poets of which he was a student, might be aptly applied to himself: ‘It is rare to find one who was so much of a poet and so little of an artist. Hopelessly quaint, he never doubts his genius; it is only he and his God in all the world. He uses language sometimes as greatly as Shakespeare; and though there is not much straight grain in him, there is plenty of rough, crooked timber.’ The affinity of Thoreau’s style to that of Herbert, Donne, Cowley, and other minor Elizabethans, has often been remarked; and it has been truly said that the stanzas ‘Sic Vita’ might almost have a niche in Herbert’s Temple. It must be granted, then, that Thoreau, whatever his{xviii} limitations, had the poet’s vision, and sometimes the poet’s divine faculty; and if this was manifested more frequently in his masterly prose, it was neither absent from his verse nor from the whole tenor of his character. It was his destiny to be one of the greatest prose writers whom America has produced, and he had a strong, perhaps an exaggerated, sense of the dignity of this calling. ‘Great prose,’ he thinks, ‘of equal elevation, commands our respect more than great verse, since it implies a more permanent and level height, a life more pervaded with the grandeur of the thought. The poet only makes an irruption, like a Parthian, and is off again, shooting while he retreats; but the prose writer has conquered, like a Roman, and settled colonies.’ If, therefore, we cannot unreservedly place Thoreau among the poetical brotherhood, we may at least recognise that he was a poet in the larger sense in which his friends so regarded him—he felt, thought, acted, and lived as a poet, though he did not always write as one. In his own words{xix}— <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> ‘My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.’ </div> </div></div> Such qualities dignify life and make the expression of it memorable, not perhaps immediately, to the multitude of readers, but at first to an appreciative few, and eventually to a wide circle of mankind.{1}{xx} <h2>NATURE</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> O Nature! I do not aspire To be the highest in thy quire,— To be a meteor in the sky, Or comet that may range on high; Only a zephyr that may blow Among the reeds by the river low; Give me thy most privy place Where to run my airy race. </div> <div class="stanza"> In some withdrawn, unpublic mead Let me sigh upon a reed, Or in the woods, with leafy din, Whisper the still evening in:{2} Some still work give me to do,— Only—be it near to you! </div> <div class="stanza"> For I’d rather be thy child And pupil, in the forest wild, Than be the king of men elsewhere, And most sovereign slave of care: To have one moment of thy dawn, Than share the city’s year forlorn. {3}</div> </div></div> <h2>INSPIRATION</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Whate’er we leave to God, God does, And blesses us; The work we choose should be our own, God leaves alone. </div> <div class="stanza"> ———— </div> <div class="stanza"> If with light head erect I sing, Though all the Muses lend their force, From my poor love of anything, The verse is weak and shallow as its source. </div> <div class="stanza"> But if with bended neck I grope Listening behind me for my wit, With faith superior to hope, More anxious to keep back than forward it;{4} </div> <div class="stanza"> Making my soul accomplice there Unto the flame my heart hath lit, Then will the verse for ever wear— Time cannot bend the line which God hath writ. </div> <div class="stanza"> Always the general show of things Floats in review before my mind, And such true love and reverence brings, That sometimes I forget that I am blind. </div> <div class="stanza"> But now there comes unsought, unseen, Some clear divine electuary, And I, who had but sensual been, Grow sensible, and as God is, am wary. </div> <div class="stanza"> I hearing get, who had but ears, And sight, who had but eyes before,{5} I moments live, who lived but years, And truth discern, who knew but learning’s lore. </div> <div class="stanza"> I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight, New earths and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light. </div> <div class="stanza"> A clear and ancient harmony Pierces my soul through all its din, As through its utmost melody,— Farther behind than they, farther within. </div> <div class="stanza"> More swift its bolt than lightning is, Its voice than thunder is more loud, It doth expand my privacies To all, and leave me single in the crowd.{6} </div> <div class="stanza"> It speaks with such authority, With so serene and lofty tone, That idle Time runs gadding by, And leaves me with Eternity alone. </div> <div class="stanza"> Now chiefly is my natal hour, And only now my prime of life, Of manhood’s strength it is the flower, ’Tis peace’s end and war’s beginning strife. </div> <div class="stanza"> It comes in summer’s broadest noon, By a grey wall or some chance place, Unseasoning Time, insulting June, And vexing day with its presuming face. </div> <div class="stanza"> Such fragrance round my couch it makes, More rich than are Arabian drugs,{7} That my soul scents its life and wakes The body up beneath its perfumed rugs. </div> <div class="stanza"> Such is the Muse, the heavenly maid, The star that guides our mortal course, Which shows where life’s true kernel’s laid, Its wheat’s fine flour, and its undying force. </div> <div class="stanza"> She with one breath attunes the spheres, And also my poor human heart, With one impulse propels the years Around, and gives my throbbing pulse its start. </div> <div class="stanza"> I will not doubt for evermore, Nor falter from a steadfast faith,{8} For though the system be turned o’er, God takes not back the word which once he saith. </div> <div class="stanza"> I will not doubt the love untold Which not my worth nor want has bought, Which wooed me young, and wooes me old, And to this evening hath me brought. </div> <div class="stanza"> My memory I’ll educate To know the one historic truth, Remembering to the latest date The only true and sole immortal youth. </div> <div class="stanza"> Be but thy inspiration given, No matter through what danger sought,{9} I’ll fathom hell or climb to heaven, And yet esteem that cheap which love has bought. </div> <div class="stanza"> ———— </div> <div class="stanza"> Fame cannot tempt the bard Who’s famous with his God, Nor laurel him reward Who has his Maker’s nod. {10}</div> </div></div> <h2>SIC VITA[4]</h2> ‘It is but thin soil where we stand; I have felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw, which reminded me of myself.’—The Week. <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their links Were made so loose and wide, Methinks, For milder weather.{11} </div> <div class="stanza"> A bunch of violets without their roots, And sorrel intermixed, Encircled by a wisp of straw Once coiled about their shoots, The law By which I’m fixed. </div> <div class="stanza"> A nosegay which Time clutched from out Those fair Elysian fields, With weeds and broken stems, in haste, Doth make the rabble rout That waste The day he yields. </div> <div class="stanza"> And here I bloom for a short hour unseen, Drinking my juices up, With no root in the land{12} To keep my branches green, But stand In a bare cup. </div> <div class="stanza"> Some tender buds were left upon my stem In mimicry of life, But ah! the children will not know, Till time has withered them, The woe With which they’re rife. </div> <div class="stanza"> But now I see I was not plucked for nought, And after in life’s vase Of glass set while I might survive, But by a kind hand brought Alive To a strange place.{13} </div> <div class="stanza"> That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours, And by another year, Such as God knows, with freer air, More fruits and fairer flowers Will bear, While I droop here. {14}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE FISHER’S BOY[5]</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> My life is like a stroll upon the beach, As near the ocean’s edge as I can go; My tardy steps its waves sometimes o’erreach, Sometimes I stay to let them overflow. </div> <div class="stanza"> My sole employment ’tis, and scrupulous care, To place my gains beyond the reach of tides, Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare, Which Ocean kindly to my hand confides.{15} </div> <div class="stanza"> I have but few companions on the shore: They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea; Yet oft I think the ocean they’ve sailed o’er Is deeper known upon the strand to me. </div> <div class="stanza"> The middle sea contains no crimson dulse, Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view; Along the shore my hand is on its pulse, And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew. {16}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE ATLANTIDES</h2> ‘The Friend is some fair floating isle of palms eluding the mariner in Pacific Seas.’—The Week. <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> The smothered streams of love, which flow More bright than Phlegethon, more low, Island us ever, like the sea, In an Atlantic mystery. Our fabled shores none ever reach, No mariner has found our beach, Scarcely our mirage now is seen, And neighboring waves with floating green, Yet still the oldest charts contain Some dotted outline of our main; In ancient times midsummer days Unto the western islands’ gaze,{17} To Teneriffe and the Azores, Have shown our faint and cloud-like shores. </div> <div class="stanza"> But sink not yet, ye desolate isles, Anon your coast with commerce smiles, And richer freights ye’ll furnish far Than Africa or Malabar. Be fair, be fertile evermore, Ye rumored but untrodden shore; Princes and monarchs will contend Who first unto your lands shall send, And pawn the jewels of the crown To call your distant soil their own. </div> <div class="stanza"> Sea and land are but his neighbors, And companions in his labors,{18} Who on the ocean’s verge and firm land’s end Doth long and truly seek his Friend. Many men dwell far inland, But he alone sits on the strand. Whether he ponders men or books, Always still he seaward looks, Marine news he ever reads, And the slightest glances heeds, Feels the sea breeze on his cheek, At each word the landsmen speak, In every companion’s eye A sailing vessel doth descry; In the ocean’s sullen roar From some distant port he hears, Of wrecks upon a distant shore, And the ventures of past years. {19}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE AURORA OF GUIDO[6] A FRAGMENT</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> The god of day his car rolls up the slopes, Reining his prancing steeds with steady hand; The lingering moon through western shadows gropes, While Morning sheds its light o’er sea and land. </div> <div class="stanza"> Castles and cities by the sounding main Resound with all the busy din of life; The fisherman unfurls his sails again; And the recruited warrior bides the strife.{20} </div> <div class="stanza"> The early breeze ruffles the poplar leaves; The curling waves reflect the unseen light; The slumbering sea with the day’s impulse heaves, While o’er the western hill retires the drowsy night. </div> <div class="stanza"> The seabirds dip their bills in Ocean’s foam, Far circling out over the frothy waves,— </div> <div class="stanza"> . . . . . . </div> <div class="stanza"> {21}</div> </div></div> <h2>SYMPATHY[7]</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Lately, alas! I knew a gentle boy, Whose features all were cast in Virtue’s mould, As one she had designed for Beauty’s toy, But after manned him for her own stronghold. </div> <div class="stanza"> On every side he open was as day, That you might see no lack of strength within; For walls and ports do only serve alway For a pretence to feebleness and sin.{22} </div> <div class="stanza"> Say not that Caesar was victorious, With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame; In other sense this youth was glorious, Himself a kingdom wheresoe’er he came. </div> <div class="stanza"> No strength went out to get him victory, When all was income of its own accord; For where he went none other was to see, But all were parcel of their noble lord. </div> <div class="stanza"> He forayed like the subtle haze of summer, That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes, And revolutions works without a murmur, Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies.{23} </div> <div class="stanza"> So was I taken unawares by this, I quite forgot my homage to confess; Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is, I might have loved him, had I loved him less. </div> <div class="stanza"> Each moment as we nearer drew to each, A stern respect withheld us farther yet, So that we seemed beyond each other’s reach, And less acquainted than when first we met. </div> <div class="stanza"> We two were one while we did sympathise, So could we not the simplest bargain drive; And what avails it, now that we are wise, If absence doth this doubleness contrive? </div> <div class="stanza"> Eternity may not the chance repeat; But I must tread my single way alone,{24} In sad remembrance that we once did meet, And know that bliss irrevocably gone. </div> <div class="stanza"> The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing, For elegy has other subject none; Each strain of music in my ears shall ring Knell of departure from that other one. </div> <div class="stanza"> Make haste and celebrate my tragedy; With fitting strain resound, ye woods and fields; Sorrow is dearer in such case to me Than all the joys other occasion yields. </div> <div class="stanza"> ———— </div> <div class="stanza"> Is’t then too late the damage to repair? Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp has reft The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare, But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.{25} </div> <div class="stanza"> If I but love that virtue which he is, Though it be scented in the morning air, Still shall we be truest acquaintances, Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare. {26}</div> </div></div> <h2>FRIENDSHIP</h2> ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers.’ <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Let such pure hate still underprop Our love, that we may be Each other’s conscience, And have our sympathy Mainly from thence. </div> <div class="stanza"> We’ll one another treat like gods, And all the faith we have In virtue and in truth, bestow On either, and suspicion leave To gods below.{27} </div> <div class="stanza"> Two solitary stars— Unmeasured systems far Between us roll; But by our conscious light we are Determined to one pole. </div> <div class="stanza"> What need confound the sphere?— Love can afford to wait; For it no hour’s too late That witnesseth one duty’s end, Or to another doth beginning lend. </div> <div class="stanza"> It will subserve no use, More than the tints of flowers; Only the independent guest Frequents its bowers, Inherits its bequest.{28} </div> <div class="stanza"> No speech, though kind, has it; But kinder silence doles Unto its mates; By night consoles, By day congratulates. </div> <div class="stanza"> What saith the tongue to tongue? What heareth ear of ear? By the decrees of fate From year to year, Does it communicate. </div> <div class="stanza"> Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns; No trivial bridge of words, Or arch of boldest span, Can leap the moat that girds The sincere man.{29} </div> <div class="stanza"> No show of bolts and bars Can keep the foeman out, Or ’scape his secret mine, Who entered with the doubt That drew the line. </div> <div class="stanza"> No warder at the gate Can let the friendly in; But, like the sun, o’er all He will the castle win, And shine along the wall. </div> <div class="stanza"> There’s nothing in the world I know That can escape from love, For every depth it goes below, And every height above.{30} </div> <div class="stanza"> It waits, as waits the sky Until the clouds go by, Yet shines serenely on With an eternal day, Alike when they are gone, And when they stay. </div> <div class="stanza"> Implacable is Love,— Foes may be bought or teased From their hostile intent, But he goes unappeased Who is on kindness bent. {31}</div> </div></div> <h2>TRUE KINDNESS</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> True kindness is a pure divine affinity, Not founded upon human consanguinity. It is a spirit, not a blood relation, Superior to family and station. {32}</div> </div></div> <h2>TO THE MAIDEN IN THE EAST</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Low in the eastern sky Is set thy glancing eye; And though its gracious light Ne’er riseth to my sight, Yet every star that climbs Above the gnarlèd limbs Of yonder hill, Conveys thy gentle will. </div> <div class="stanza"> Believe I knew thy thought, And that the zephyrs brought{33} Thy kindest wishes through, As mine they bear to you; That some attentive cloud Did pause amid the crowd Over my head, While gentle things were said. </div> <div class="stanza"> Believe the thrushes sung, And that the flower-bells rung, That herbs exhaled their scent, And beasts knew what was meant, The trees a welcome waved, And lakes their margins laved, When thy free mind To my retreat did wind.{34} </div> <div class="stanza"> It was a summer eve, The air did gently heave While yet a low-hung cloud Thy eastern skies did shroud; The lightning’s silent gleam, Startling my drowsy dream, Seemed like the flash Under thy dark eyelash. </div> <div class="stanza"> From yonder comes the sun, But soon his course is run, Rising to trivial day Along his dusty way; But thy noontide completes Only auroral heats, Nor ever sets, To hasten vain regrets.{35} </div> <div class="stanza"> Direct thy pensive eye Into the western sky; And when the evening star Does glimmer from afar Upon the mountain line, Accept it for a sign That I am near, And thinking of thee here. </div> <div class="stanza"> I’ll be thy Mercury, Thou Cytherea to me, Distinguished by thy face The earth shall learn my place; As near beneath thy light Will I outwear the night, With mingled ray Leading the westward way.{36} </div> <div class="stanza"> Still will I strive to be As if thou wert with me; Whatever path I take, It shall be for thy sake, Of gentle slope and wide, As thou wert by my side, Without a root To trip thy gentle foot. </div> <div class="stanza"> I’ll walk with gentle pace, And choose the smoothest place, And careful dip the oar, And shun the winding shore, And gently steer my boat Where water-lilies float, And cardinal flowers Stand in their sylvan bowers. {37}</div> </div></div> <h2>FREE LOVE</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> My love must be as free As is the eagle’s wing, Hovering o’er land and sea And everything. </div> <div class="stanza"> I must not dim my eye In thy saloon, I must not leave my sky And nightly moon. </div> <div class="stanza"> Be not the fowler’s net Which stays my flight, And craftily is set T’ allure the sight.{38} </div> <div class="stanza"> But be the favoring gale That bears me on, And still doth fill my sail When thou art gone. </div> <div class="stanza"> I cannot leave my sky For thy caprice, True love would soar as high As heaven is. </div> <div class="stanza"> The eagle would not brook Her mate thus won, Who trained his eye to look Beneath the sun. {39}</div> </div></div> <h2>RUMORS FROM AN ÆOLIAN HARP</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> There is a vale which none hath seen, Where foot of man has never been, Such as here lives with toil and strife, An anxious and a sinful life. </div> <div class="stanza"> There every virtue has its birth, Ere it descends upon the earth, And thither every deed returns, Which in the generous bosom burns. </div> <div class="stanza"> There love is warm, and youth is young, And poetry is yet unsung, For Virtue still adventures there, And freely breathes her native air.{40} </div> <div class="stanza"> And ever, if you hearken well, You still may hear its vesper bell, And tread of high-souled men go by, Their thoughts conversing with the sky. {41}</div> </div></div> <h2>LINES</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Though all the Fates should prove unkind, Leave not your native land behind. The ship, becalmed, at length stands still; The steed must rest beneath the hill; But swiftly still our fortunes pace To find us out in every place. </div> <div class="stanza"> The vessel, though her masts be firm, Beneath her copper bears a worm; Around the Cape, across the Line, Till fields of ice her course confine; It matters not how smooth the breeze, How shallow or how deep the seas,{42} Whether she bears Manilla twine, Or in her hold Madeira wine, Or China teas, or Spanish hides, In port or quarantine she rides; Far from New England’s blustering shore, New England’s worm her hulk shall bore, And sink her in the Indian seas,— Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas. {43}</div> </div></div> <h2>STANZAS</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza1"> ‘Before each van Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms From either end of Heaven the welkin burns.’ </div> </div></div> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Away! away! away! away! Ye have not kept your secret well, I will abide that other day, Those other lands ye tell. </div> <div class="stanza"> Has time no leisure left for these, The acts that ye rehearse? Is not eternity a lease For better deeds than verse?{44} </div> <div class="stanza"> ’Tis sweet to hear of heroes dead, To know them still alive, But sweeter if we earn their bread, And in us they survive. </div> <div class="stanza"> Our life should feed the springs of fame With a perennial wave, As ocean feeds the babbling founts Which find in it their grave. </div> <div class="stanza"> Ye skies drop gently round my breast, And be my corslet blue, Ye earth receive my lance in rest, My faithful charger you; </div> <div class="stanza"> Ye stars my spear-heads in the sky, My arrow-tips ye are;{45} I see the routed foemen fly, My bright spears fixèd are. </div> <div class="stanza"> Give me an angel for a foe, Fix now the place and time, And straight to meet him I will go Above the starry chime. </div> <div class="stanza"> And with our clashing bucklers’ clang The heavenly spheres shall ring, While bright the northern lights shall hang Beside our tourneying. </div> <div class="stanza"> And if she lose her champion true, Tell Heaven not despair, For I will be her champion new, Her fame I will repair. {46}</div> </div></div> <h2>A RIVER SCENE</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> The river swelleth more and more, Like some sweet influence stealing o’er The passive town; and for a while Each tussock makes a tiny isle, Where, on some friendly Ararat, Resteth the weary water-rat. </div> <div class="stanza"> No ripple shows Musketaquid, Her very current e’en is hid, As deepest souls do calmest rest, When thoughts are swelling in the breast,{47} And she that in the summer’s drought Doth make a rippling and a rout, Sleeps from Nahshawtuck to the Cliff, Unruffled by a single skiff. But by a thousand distant hills The louder roar a thousand rills, And many a spring which now is dumb, And many a stream with smothered hum, Doth swifter well and faster glide, Though buried deep beneath the tide. </div> <div class="stanza"> Our village shows a rural Venice, Its broad lagoons where yonder fen is; As lovely as the Bay of Naples Yon placid cove amid the maples; And in my neighbour’s field of corn I recognise the Golden Horn.{48} Here Nature taught from year to year, When only red men came to hear; Methinks ’twas in this school of art Venice and Naples learned their part, But still their mistress, to my mind, Her young disciples leaves behind. {49}</div> </div></div> <h2>RIVER SONG</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Ply the oars! away! away! In each dew-drop of the morning Lies the promise of a day. </div> <div class="stanza"> Rivers from the sunrise flow, Springing with the dewy morn; Voyageurs ’gainst time do row, Idle noon nor sunset know, Ever even with the dawn. </div> <div class="stanza"> . . . . . . </div> <div class="stanza"> Since that first ‘Away! away!’ Many a lengthy reach we’ve rowed, Still the sparrow on the spray Hastes to usher in the day With her simple-stanza’d ode. {50}</div> </div></div> <h2>SOME TUMULTUOUS LITTLE RILL</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Some tumultuous little rill, Purling round its storied pebble, Tinkling to the selfsame tune, From September until June, Which no drought doth e’er enfeeble. </div> <div class="stanza"> Silent flows the parent stream, And if rocks do lie below, Smothers with her waves the din, As it were a youthful sin, Just as still, and just as slow. {51}</div> </div></div> <h2>BOAT SONG</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Thus, perchance, the Indian hunter, Many a lagging year agone, Gliding o’er thy rippling waters, Lowly hummed a natural song. </div> <div class="stanza"> Now the sun’s behind the willows, Now he gleams along the waves, Faintly o’er the wearied billows Come the spirits of the braves. {52}</div> </div></div> <h2>TO MY BROTHER</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Brother, where dost thou dwell? What sun shines for thee now? Dost thou indeed fare well, As we wished thee here below? </div> <div class="stanza"> What season didst thou find? ’Twas winter here. Are not the Fates more kind Than they appear? </div> <div class="stanza"> Is thy brow clear again As in thy youthful years?{53} And was that ugly pain The summit of thy fears? </div> <div class="stanza"> Yet thou wast cheery still; They could not quench thy fire; Thou didst abide their will, And then retire. </div> <div class="stanza"> Where chiefly shall I look To feel thy presence near? Along the neighboring brook May I thy voice still hear? </div> <div class="stanza"> Dost thou still haunt the brink Of yonder river’s tide? And may I ever think That thou art by my side?{54} </div> <div class="stanza"> What bird wilt thou employ To bring me word of thee? For it would give them joy— ’Twould give them liberty— To serve their former lord With wing and minstrelsy. </div> <div class="stanza"> A sadder strain mixed with their song, They’ve slowlier built their nests; Since thou art gone Their lively labor rests. </div> <div class="stanza"> Where is the finch, the thrush, I used to hear? Ah, they could well abide The dying year.{55} </div> <div class="stanza"> Now they no more return, I hear them not; They have remained to mourn, Or else forgot. {56}</div> </div></div> <h2>STANZAS</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Nature doth have her dawn each day, But mine are far between; Content, I cry, for, sooth to say, Mine brightest are, I ween. </div> <div class="stanza"> For when my sun doth deign to rise, Though it be her noontide, Her fairest field in shadow lies, Nor can my light abide. </div> <div class="stanza"> Sometimes I bask me in her day, Conversing with my mate, But if we interchange one ray, Forthwith her heats abate.{57} </div> <div class="stanza"> Through his discourse I climb and see As from some eastern hill, A brighter morrow rise to me Than lieth in her skill. </div> <div class="stanza"> As ’twere two summer days in one, Two Sundays come together, Our rays united make one sun, With fairest summer weather. {58}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE INWARD MORNING</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Packed in my mind lie all the clothes Which outward nature wears, And in its fashion’s hourly change It all things else repairs. </div> <div class="stanza"> In vain I look for change abroad, And can no difference find, Till some new ray of peace uncalled Illumes my inmost mind. </div> <div class="stanza"> What is it gilds the trees and clouds, And paints the heavens so gay,{59} But yonder fast-abiding light With its unchanging ray? </div> <div class="stanza"> Lo, when the sun streams through the wood, Upon a winter’s morn, Where’er his silent beams intrude The murky night is gone. </div> <div class="stanza"> How could the patient pine have known The morning breeze would come, Or humble flowers anticipate The insect’s noonday hum,— </div> <div class="stanza"> Till the new light with morning cheer From far streamed through the aisles, And nimbly told the forest trees For many stretching miles?{60} </div> <div class="stanza"> I’ve heard within my inmost soul Such cheerful morning news, In the horizon of my mind Have seen such orient hues, </div> <div class="stanza"> As in the twilight of the dawn, When the first birds awake, Are heard within some silent wood, Where they the small twigs break, </div> <div class="stanza"> Or in the eastern skies are seen, Before the sun appears, The harbingers of summer heats Which from afar he bears. {61}</div> </div></div> <h2>GREECE</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> When life contracts into a vulgar span, And human nature tires to be a man, I thank the Gods for Greece, That permanent realm of peace. For as the rising moon far in the night Chequers the shade with her forerunning light, So in my darkest hour my senses seem To catch from her Acropolis a gleam. </div> <div class="stanza"> Greece, who am I that should remember thee, Thy Marathon, and thy Thermopylae? Is my life vulgar, my fate mean, Which on such golden memories can lean? {62}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE FUNERAL BELL</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> One more is gone Out of the busy throng That tread these paths; The church-bell tolls, Its sad knell rolls To many hearths. </div> <div class="stanza"> Flower-bells toll not, Their echoes roll not Upon my ear; There still perchance That gentle spirit haunts A fragrant bier.{63} </div> <div class="stanza"> Low lies the pall, Lowly the mourners all Their passage grope; No sable hue Mars the serene blue Of heaven’s cope. </div> <div class="stanza"> In distant dell Faint sounds the funeral bell; A heavenly chime; Some poet there Weaves the light-burthened air Into sweet rhyme. {64}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE SUMMER RAIN</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> My books I’d fain cast off, I cannot read, ’Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, And will not mind to hit their proper targe. </div> <div class="stanza"> Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too, Our Shakespeare’s life were rich to live again, What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true, Nor Shakespeare’s books, unless his books were men.{65} </div> <div class="stanza"> Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough, What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town, If juster battles are enacted now Between the ants upon this hummock’s crown? </div> <div class="stanza"> Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn, If red or black the gods will favor most, Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn, Struggling to heave some rock against the host. </div> <div class="stanza"> Tell Shakespeare to attend some leisure hour, For now I’ve business with this drop of dew, And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower,— I’ll meet him shortly when the sky is blue. </div> <div class="stanza"> This bed of herdsgrass and wild oats was spread Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use,{66} A clover tuft is pillow for my head, And violets quite overtop my shoes. </div> <div class="stanza"> And now the cordial clouds have shut all in, And gently swells the wind to say all’s well; The scattered drops are falling fast and thin, Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell. </div> <div class="stanza"> I am well drenched upon my bed of oats; But see that globe come rolling down its stem, Now like a lonely planet there it floats, And now it sinks into my garment’s hem. </div> <div class="stanza"> Drip, drip the trees for all the country round, And richness rare distils from every bough; The wind alone it is makes every sound, Shaking down crystals on the leaves below.{67} </div> <div class="stanza"> For shame the sun will never show himself, Who could not with his beams e’er melt me so; My dripping locks,—they would become an elf, Who in a beaded coat does gayly go. {68}</div> </div></div> <h2>MIST</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Low-anchored cloud, Newfoundland air, Fountain-head and source of rivers, Dew-cloth, dream-drapery, And napkin spread by fays; Drifting meadow of the air, Where bloom the daisied banks and violets, And in whose fenny labyrinth The bittern booms and heron wades; Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,— Bear only perfumes and the scent Of healing herbs to just men’s fields. {69}</div> </div></div> <h2>SMOKE[8]</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird, Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight; Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; By night star-veiling, and by day Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; Go thou, my incense, upward from this hearth, And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. {70}</div> </div></div> <h2>HAZE</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Woof of the sun,[9] ethereal gauze, Woven of Nature’s richest stuffs, Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea, Last conquest of the eye; Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust, Aerial surf upon the shores of earth, Ethereal estuary, frith of light, Breakers of air, billows of heat, Fine summer spray on inland seas; Bird of the sun, transparent-winged, Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned, From heath or stubble rising without song,— Establish thy serenity o’er the fields. {71}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE MOON</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza1"> ‘Time wears her not; she doth his chariot guide; Mortality below her orb is placed.’—Raleigh. </div> </div></div> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> The full-orbed moon with unchanged ray Mounts up the eastern sky, Not doomed to these short nights for aye, But shining steadily. </div> <div class="stanza"> She does not wane, but my fortùne, Which her rays do not bless; My wayward path declineth soon, But she shines not the less. </div> <div class="stanza"> And if she faintly glimmers here And palèd is her light, Yet always in her proper sphere She’s mistress of the night. {72}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE VIREO</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Upon the lofty elm-tree sprays The vireo rings the changes sweet, During the trivial summer days, Striving to lift our thoughts above the street. {73}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE POET’S DELAY</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> In vain I see the morning rise, In vain observe the western blaze, Who idly look to other skies, Expecting life by other ways. </div> <div class="stanza"> Amidst such boundless wealth without, I only still am poor within, The birds have sung their summer out, But still my spring does not begin. </div> <div class="stanza"> Shall I then wait the autumn wind, Compelled to seek a milder day, And leave no curious nest behind, No woods still echoing to my lay? {74}</div> </div></div> <h2>LINES</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> All things are current found On earthly ground, Spirits and elements Have their descents. </div> <div class="stanza"> Night and day, year on year, High and low, far and near, These are our own aspects, These are our own regrets. </div> <div class="stanza"> Ye gods of the shore, Who abide evermore, I see your far headland, Stretching on either hand;{75} I hear the sweet evening sounds From your undecaying grounds; Cheat me no more with time, Take me to your clime. {76}</div> </div></div> <h2>NATURE’S CHILD</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> I am the autumnal sun, With autumn gales my race is run; When will the hazel put forth its flowers, Or the grape ripen under my bowers? When will the harvest or the hunter’s moon, Turn my midnight into mid-noon? I am all sere and yellow, And to my core mellow. The mast is dropping within my woods, The winter is lurking within my moods, And the rustling of the withered leaf Is the constant music of my grief. {77}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE FALL OF THE LEAF[10]</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Thank God who seasons thus the year, And sometimes kindly slants his rays; For in his winter he’s most near And plainest seen upon the shortest days. </div> <div class="stanza"> Who gently tempers now his heats, And then his harsher cold, lest we Should surfeit on the summer’s sweets, Or pine upon the winter’s crudity.{78} </div> <div class="stanza"> A sober mind will walk alone, Apart from nature, if need be, And only its own seasons own; For nature leaving its humanity. </div> <div class="stanza"> Sometimes a late autumnal thought Has crossed my mind in green July, And to its early freshness brought Late ripened fruits, and an autumnal sky. </div> <div class="stanza"> . . . . . . </div> <div class="stanza"> The evening of the year draws on, The fields a later aspect wear; Since Summer’s garishness is gone, Some grains of night tincture the noontide air. </div> <div class="stanza"> Behold! the shadows of the trees Now circle wider ’bout their stem,{79} Like sentries that by slow degrees Perform their rounds, gently protecting them. </div> <div class="stanza"> And as the year doth decline, The sun allows a scantier light; Behind each needle of the pine There lurks a small auxiliar to the night. </div> <div class="stanza"> I hear the cricket’s slumbrous lay Around, beneath me, and on high; It rocks the night, it soothes the day, And everywhere is Nature’s lullaby. </div> <div class="stanza"> But most he chirps beneath the sod, When he has made his winter bed; His creak grown fainter but more broad, A film of autumn o’er the summer spread.{80} </div> <div class="stanza"> Small birds, in fleets migrating by, Now beat across some meadow’s bay, And as they tack and veer on high, With faint and hurried click beguile the way. </div> <div class="stanza"> Far in the woods, these golden days, Some leaf obeys its Maker’s call; And through their hollow aisles it plays With delicate touch the prelude of the Fall. </div> <div class="stanza"> Gently withdrawing from its stem, It lightly lays itself along Where the same hand hath pillowed them, Resigned to sleep upon the old year’s throng. </div> <div class="stanza"> The loneliest birch is brown and sere, The furthest pool is strewn with leaves,{81} Which float upon their watery bier, Where is no eye that sees, no heart that grieves. </div> <div class="stanza"> The jay screams through the chestnut wood; The crisped and yellow leaves around Are hue and texture of my mood— And these rough burrs my heirlooms on the ground. </div> <div class="stanza"> The threadbare trees, so poor and thin— They are no wealthier than I; But with as brave a core within They rear their boughs to the October sky. </div> <div class="stanza"> Poor knights they are which bravely wait The charge of Winter’s cavalry, Keeping a simple Roman state, Discumbered of their Persian luxury. {82}</div> </div></div> <h2>SMOKE IN WINTER</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> The sluggish smoke curls up from some deep dell, The stiffened air exploring in the dawn, And making slow acquaintance with the day; Delaying now upon its heavenward course, In wreathèd loiterings dallying with itself, With as uncertain purpose and slow deed, As its half-wakened master by the hearth, Whose mind, still slumbering, and sluggish thoughts Have not yet swept into the onward current Of the new day;—and now it streams afar, The while the chopper goes with step direct, And mind intent to wield the early axe.{83} First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad His early scout, his emissary, smoke, The earliest, latest pilgrim from the roof, To feel the frosty air, inform the day; And while he crouches still beside the hearth, Nor musters courage to unbar the door, It has gone down the glen with the light wind, And o’er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath, Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill, And warmed the pinions of the early bird; And now, perchance, high in the crispy air, Has caught sight of the day o’er the earth’s edge, And greets its master’s eye at his low door, As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky. {84}</div> </div></div> <h2>WINTER MEMORIES</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Within the circuit of this plodding life There enter moments of an azure hue, Untarnished fair as is the violet Or anemone, when the spring strews them By some meandering rivulet, which make The best philosophy untrue that aims But to console man for his grievances. I have remembered when the winter came, High in my chamber in the frosty nights, When in the still light of the cheerful moon, On every twig and rail and jutting spout, The icy spears were adding to their length Against the arrows of the coming sun,— How in the shimmering noon of summer past{85} Some unrecorded beam slanted across The upland pastures where the johnswort grew; Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind, The bee’s long smothered hum, on the blue flag Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill, Which now through all its course stands still and dumb, Its own memorial,—purling at its play Along the slopes, and through the meadows next, Until its youthful sound was hushed at last In the staid current of the lowland stream; Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned, And where the fieldfare followed in the rear, When all the fields around lay bound and hoar Beneath a thick integument of snow:— So by God’s cheap economy made rich, To go upon my winter’s task again. {86}</div> </div></div> <h2>STANZAS WRITTEN AT WALDEN</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> When Winter fringes every bough With his fantastic wreath, And puts the seal of silence now Upon the leaves beneath; </div> <div class="stanza"> When every stream in its pent-house Goes gurgling on its way, And in his gallery the mouse Nibbleth the meadow hay; </div> <div class="stanza"> Methinks the summer still is nigh, And lurketh underneath, As that same meadow-mouse doth lie Snug in that last year’s heath.{87} </div> <div class="stanza"> And if perchance the chicadee Lisp a faint note anon, The snow is summer’s canopy, Which she herself put on. </div> <div class="stanza"> Fair blossoms deck the cheerful trees, And dazzling fruits depend; The north wind sighs a summer breeze, The nipping frosts to fend, </div> <div class="stanza"> Bringing glad tidings unto me, The while I stand all ear, Of a serene eternity, Which need not winter fear. </div> <div class="stanza"> Out on the silent pond straightway The restless ice doth crack,{88} And pond-sprites merry gambols play Amid the deafening rack. </div> <div class="stanza"> Eager I hasten to the vale, As if I heard brave news, How Nature held high festival, Which it were hard to lose. </div> <div class="stanza"> I gambol with my neighbor ice, And sympathising quake, As each new crack darts in a trice Across the gladsome lake. </div> <div class="stanza"> One with the cricket in the ground, And fagot on the hearth, Resounds the rare domestic sound Along the forest path. {89}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE THAW</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> I saw the civil sun drying earth’s tears, Her tears of joy that only faster flowed. </div> <div class="stanza"> Fain would I stretch me by the highway side To thaw and trickle with the melting snow; That mingled, soul and body, with the tide, I too may through the pores of nature flow. {90}</div> </div></div> <h2>A WINTER SCENE[11]</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> The rabbit leaps, The mouse out-creeps, The flag out-peeps Beside the brook; The ferret weeps, The marmot sleeps, The owlet keeps In his snug nook. </div> <div class="stanza"> The apples thaw, The ravens caw, The squirrels gnaw The frozen fruit.{91} To their retreat I track the feet Of mice that eat The apple’s root. </div> <div class="stanza"> The snow-dust falls, The otter crawls, The partridge calls, Far in the wood. The traveller dreams, The tree-ice gleams, The blue-jay screams In angry mood. </div> <div class="stanza"> The willows droop, The alders stoop,{92} The pheasants group Beneath the snow. The catkins green Cast o’er the scene A summer’s sheen, A genial glow. {93}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE CROW</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Thou dusky spirit of the wood, Bird of an ancient brood, Flitting thy lonely way, A meteor in the summer’s day, From wood to wood, from hill to hill, Low over forest, field, and rill, What wouldst thou say? Why shouldst thou haunt the day? What makes thy melancholy float? What bravery inspires thy throat, And bears thee up above the clouds, Over desponding human crowds, Which far below Lay thy haunts low? {94}</div> </div></div> <h2>TO A STRAY FOWL</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Poor bird! destined to lead thy life Far in the adventurous west, And here to be debarred to-night From thy accustomed nest; Must thou fall back upon old instinct now— Well-nigh extinct under man’s fickle care? Did heaven bestow its quenchless inner light So long ago, for thy small want to-night? Why stand’st upon thy toes to crow so late? The moon is deaf to thy low feathered fate; Or dost thou think so to possess the night, And people the drear dark with thy brave sprite? And now with anxious eye thou look’st about,{95} While the relentless shade draws on its veil, For some sure shelter from approaching dews, And the insidious step of nightly foes. I fear imprisonment has dulled thy wit, Or ingrained servitude extinguished it— But no—dim memory of the days of yore, By Brahmapootra and the Jumna’s shore, Where thy proud race flew swiftly o’er the heath, And sought its food the jungle’s shade beneath, Has taught thy wings to seek yon friendly trees, As erst by Indus’ bank and far Ganges. {96}</div> </div></div> <h2>MOUNTAINS</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> With frontier strength ye stand your ground, With grand content ye circle round, Tumultuous silence for all sound, Ye distant nursery of rills, Monadnock, and the Peterborough hills;— Firm argument that never stirs, Outcircling the philosophers,— Like some vast fleet Sailing through rain and sleet, Through winter’s cold and summer’s heat; Still holding on upon your high emprise, Until ye find a shore amid the skies; Not skulking close to land, With cargo contraband;{97} For they who sent a venture out by ye Have set the Sun to see Their honesty. Ships of the line, each one, Ye westward run, Convoying clouds, Which cluster in your shrouds, Always before the gale, Under a press of sail, With weight of metal all untold;— I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here, Immeasurable depth of hold, And breadth of beam, and length of running gear. </div> <div class="stanza"> Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure In your novel western leisure;{98} So cool your brows and freshly blue, As Time had nought for ye to do; For ye lie at your length, An unappropriated strength, Unhewn primeval timber For knees so stiff, for masts so limber, The stock of which new earths are made, One day to be our western trade, Fit for the stanchions of a world Which through the seas of space is hurled. </div> <div class="stanza"> While we enjoy a lingering ray, Ye still o’ertop the western day, Reposing yonder on God’s croft, Like solid stacks of hay. So bold a line as ne’er was writ On any page by human wit;{99} The forest glows as if An enemy’s camp-fires shone Along the horizon, Or the day’s funeral pyre Were lighted there; Edged with silver and with gold, The clouds hang o’er in damask fold, And with fresh depth of amber light The west is dight, Where still a few rays slant, That even Heaven seems extravagant. Watatic Hill Lies on the horizon’s sill Like a child’s toy left overnight, And other duds to left and right; On the earth’s edge, mountains and trees Stand as they were on air graven,{100} Or as the vessels in a haven Await the morning breeze. I fancy even Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven; And yonder still, in spite of history’s page, Linger the golden and the silver age; Upon the laboring gale The news of future centuries is brought, And of new dynasties of thought, From your remotest vale. </div> <div class="stanza"> But special I remember thee, Wachusett, who like me Standest alone without society. Thy far blue eye, A remnant of the sky, Seen through the clearing of the gorge,{101} Or from the windows of the forge, Doth leaven all it passes by. Nothing is true, But stands ’tween me and you, Thou western pioneer, Who know’st not shame nor fear, By venturous spirit driven Under the eaves of heaven, And canst expand thee there, And breathe enough of air. Even beyond the West Thou migratest Into unclouded tracts, Without a pilgrim’s axe, Cleaving thy road on high With thy well-tempered brow, And mak’st thyself a clearing in the sky.{102} Upholding heaven, holding down earth, Thy pastime from thy birth, Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other;— May I approve myself thy worthy brother! {103}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE RESPECTABLE FOLKS</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> The respectable folks,— Where dwell they? They whisper in the oaks, And they sigh in the hay; Summer and winter, night and day, Out on the meadow, there dwell they. They never die, Nor snivel, nor cry, Nor ask our pity With a wet eye. A sound estate they ever mend, To every asker readily lend; To the ocean wealth, To the meadow health,{104} To Time his length, To the rocks strength, To the stars light, To the weary night, To the busy day, To the idle play; And so their good cheer never ends, For all are their debtors, and all their friends. {105}</div> </div></div> <h2>POVERTY A FRAGMENT</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> If I am poor, It is that I am proud; If God has made me naked and a boor, He did not think it fit his work to shroud. </div> <div class="stanza"> The poor man comes direct from heaven to earth, As stars drop down the sky, and tropic beams; The rich receives in our gross air his birth, As from low suns are slanted golden gleams.{106} </div> <div class="stanza"> Yon sun is naked, bare of satellite, Unless our earth and moon that office hold; Though his perpetual day feareth no night, And his perennial summer dreads no cold. </div> <div class="stanza"> Mankind may delve, but cannot my wealth spend; If I no partial wealth appropriate, No armèd ships unto the Indies send, None robs me of my Orient estate. {107}</div> </div></div> <h2>CONSCIENCE</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Conscience is instinct bred in the house, Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin By an unnatural breeding in and in. I say, Turn it out doors, Into the moors. I love a life whose plot is simple, And does not thicken with every pimple, A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it, That makes the universe no worse than’t finds it. I love an earnest soul, Whose mighty joy and sorrow Are not drowned in a bowl, And brought to life to-morrow;{108} That lives one tragedy, And not seventy; A conscience worth keeping, Laughing not weeping; A conscience wise and steady, And for ever ready; Not changing with events, Dealing in compliments; A conscience exercised about Large things, where one may doubt. I love a soul not all of wood, Predestinated to be good, But true to the backbone Unto itself alone, And false to none; Born to its own affairs, Its own joys and own cares;{109} By whom the work which God begun Is finished, and not undone; Taken up where he left off, Whether to worship or to scoff; If not good, why then evil, If not good god, good devil. Goodness!—you hypocrite, come out of that, Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. I have no patience towards Such conscientious cowards. Give me simple laboring folk, Who love their work, Whose virtue is a song To cheer God along. {110}</div> </div></div> <h2>PILGRIMS</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> ‘Have you not seen In ancient times Pilgrims pass by Toward other climes? With shining faces, Youthful and strong, Mounting this hill With speech and with song?’ </div> <div class="stanza"> ‘Ah, my good sir, I know not those ways: Little my knowledge, Tho’ many my days.{111} When I have slumbered, I have heard sounds As of travellers passing These my grounds: </div> <div class="stanza"> ‘’Twas a sweet music Wafted them by, I could not tell If afar off or nigh. Unless I dreamed it, This was of yore: I never told it To mortal before; </div> <div class="stanza"> ‘Never remembered But in my dreams, What to me waking A miracle seems.’ {112}</div> </div></div> <h2>THE DEPARTURE</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> In this roadstead I have ridden, In this covert I have hidden; Friendly thoughts were cliffs to me, And I hid beneath their lea. </div> <div class="stanza"> This true people took the stranger, And warm-hearted housed the ranger; They received their roving guest, And have fed him with the best; </div> <div class="stanza"> Whatsoe’er the land afforded To the stranger’s wish accorded;{113} Shook the olive, stripped the vine, And expressed the strengthening wine. </div> <div class="stanza"> And by night they did spread o’er him What by day they spread before him;— That good-will which was repast Was his covering at last. </div> <div class="stanza"> The stranger moored him to their pier Without anxiety or fear; By day he walked the sloping land, By night the gentle heavens he scanned. </div> <div class="stanza"> When first his barque stood inland To the coast of that far Finland, Sweet-watered brooks came tumbling to the shore The weary mariner to restore.{114} </div> <div class="stanza"> And still he stayed from day to day, If he their kindness might repay; But more and more The sullen waves came rolling toward the shore. </div> <div class="stanza"> And still the more the stranger waited, The less his argosy was freighted, And still the more he stayed, The less his debt was paid. </div> <div class="stanza"> So he unfurled his shrouded mast To receive the fragrant blast; And that same refreshing gale Which had wooed him to remain Again and again, It was that filled his sail And drove him to the main.{115} </div> <div class="stanza"> All day the low-hung clouds Dropt tears into the sea; And the wind amid the shrouds Sighed plaintively. {116}</div> </div></div> <h2>INDEPENDENCE[12]</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> My life more civil is and free Than any civil polity. </div> <div class="stanza"> Ye princes, keep your realms And circumscribèd power, Not wide as are my dreams, Nor rich as is this hour. </div> <div class="stanza"> What can ye give which I have not? What can ye take which I have got? Can ye defend the dangerless? Can ye inherit nakedness?{117} </div> <div class="stanza"> To all true wants Time’s ear is deaf, Penurious States lend no relief Out of their pelf: But a free soul—thank God— Can help itself. </div> <div class="stanza"> Be sure your fate Doth keep apart its state,— Not linked with any band, Even the noblest in the land,— </div> <div class="stanza"> In tented fields with cloth of gold No place doth hold, But is more chivalrous than they are, And sigheth for a nobler war; A finer strain its trumpet rings, A brighter gleam its armor flings.{118} </div> <div class="stanza"> The life that I aspire to live, No man proposeth me; No trade upon the street[13] Wears its emblazonry. {119}</div> </div></div> <h2>DING DONG[14]</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> When the world grows old by the chimney-side, Then forth to the youngling nooks I glide, Where over the water and over the land The bells are booming on either hand. </div> <div class="stanza"> Now up they go ding, then down again dong, And awhile they ring to the same old song, For the metal goes round at a single bound, A-cutting the fields with its measured sound, While the tired tongue falls with a lengthened boom As solemn and loud as the crack of doom.{120} </div> <div class="stanza"> Then changed is their measure to tone upon tone, And seldom it is that one sound comes alone, For they ring out their peals in a mingled throng, And the breezes waft the loud ding-dong along. </div> <div class="stanza"> When the echo hath reached me in this lone vale, I am straightway a hero in coat of mail, I tug at my belt and I march on my post, And feel myself more than a match for a host. {121}</div> </div></div> <h2>MY PRAYER</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself; That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye. </div> <div class="stanza"> And next in value, which thy kindness lends, That I may greatly disappoint my friends, Howe’er they think or hope that it may be, They may not dream how thou’st distinguished me. </div> <div class="stanza"> That my weak hand may equal my firm faith, And my life practise more than my tongue saith;{122} That my low conduct may not show, Nor my relenting lines, That I thy purpose did not know, Or overrated thy designs. </div> </div></div> <hr /> Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press <div class="footnotes">FOOTNOTES: <div class="footnote">[1] In the present selection a return has been made, wherever possible, from the emendations introduced by Thoreau’s editors to the original text. </div> <div class="footnote">[2] Article on ‘The Poetry of Thoreau,’ by Joel Benton. Lippincott’s Magazine, 1886. </div> <div class="footnote">[3] John Weiss, in the Christian Examiner, 1865. </div> <div class="footnote">[4] This poem was written on a sheet of paper wrapped round a bunch of violets, tied loosely with a straw, and thrown into the window of a friend. It was read at Thoreau’s funeral by his friend Bronson Alcott. </div> <div class="footnote">[5] The above title, prefixed to these stanzas in Emerson’s selection, is scarcely suited to so personal and characteristic a poem. </div> <div class="footnote">[6] Suggested by the print of Guido’s ‘Aurora,’ sent by Mrs. Carlyle as a wedding gift to Mrs. Emerson. </div> <div class="footnote">[7] The explanation of this poem, given on Emerson’s authority, but necessarily somewhat conjectural, is that a reference is made, under the character of the ‘gentle boy,’ to the girl with whom both Henry and John Thoreau were in love. </div> <div class="footnote">[8] This and the following poem appeared under the title of ‘Orphics’ in the Dial. </div> <div class="footnote">[9] Wrongly printed ‘fen’ in Emerson’s selection. </div> <div class="footnote">[10] The first four of these stanzas (unnamed by Thoreau) were published in the Boston Commonwealth in 1863, under the title of ‘The Soul’s Season,’ the remainder as ‘The Fall of the Leaf.’ There can be little doubt that they are parts of one complete poem. </div> <div class="footnote">[11] These stanzas formed part of the original manuscript of the essay on ‘A Winter Walk,’ but were excluded by Emerson. </div> <div class="footnote">[12] First printed in full in the Boston Commonwealth, October 30, 1863. The last fourteen lines had appeared in the Dial under the title of ‘The Black Knight,’ and are so reprinted in the Riverside Edition. </div> <div class="footnote">[13] In the Dial this line runs, ‘Only the promise of my heart.’ </div> <div class="footnote">[14] A copy of this hitherto unpublished poem has been kindly furnished by Miss A. J. Ward. </div> </div> <hr class="full" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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