1845 1856 If I cannot carry forests on my back, 1846, 1847 Brahma2 If the red slayer think he slays, Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven,3 Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. 5 ΙΟ 15 1857, 1867 Days* Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 2. Brahma is the Hindu supreme soul of sky that holds them all. 5 Centenary Edition (Vol. IX, pp. 464467). "Brahma" was one of four poems by Emerson in the first number of the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1857; it then took its place in the volumes of 1867 and 1876. 3. The seven high saints of the Brahmin faith. 4. One of the most perfect of Emerson's lyrics, "Days" appeared with "Brahma" in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1857 and in the volumes of 1867 and 1876. I, in my pleached garden,1 watched the pomp, Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. 10 1857, 1867 Waldeinsamkeit I do not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea; The forest is my loyal friend, Like God it useth me. In plains that room for shadows make Of skirting hills to lie, Bound in by streams which give and take Or on the mountain-crest sublime, Or down the oaken glade, O what have I to do with time? For this the day was made. Cities of mortals woe-begone But in the serious landscape lone Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy, There the great Planter plants And with a million spells enchants Still on the seeds of all he made The rose of beauty burns; Through times that wear and forms that fade, 4. In which the branches of trees or 5 10 15 20 25 5. Emerson's son and editor translated this German title as "Forest Solitude," and associated it with the woods of Walden, Thoreau's hermitage. The black ducks mounting from the lake, The bittern's boom, a desert make Down in yon watery nook, The gray old gods whom Chaos knew, Aloft, in secret veins of air, O, few to scale those uplands dare, See thou bring not to field or stone Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own, Oblivion here thy wisdom is, Terminus® It is time to be old, To take in sail: The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more! No farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root, Fancy departs: no more invent, Contract thy firmament To compass of a tent. There's not enough for this and that, Make thy option which of two; Nor the less revere the Giver, 6. Terminus was the Roman deity of boundaries; the poem, of course, has autobiographical significance. It ap 10 15 peared in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1867, and the same year in the May-Day volume. Leave the many and hold the few. Still plan and smile, And, fault of novel germs, Who, when they gave thee breath, The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, As the bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: Right onward drive unharmed; The port well worth the cruise, is near, 20 25 30 35 40 1867 7. I.e., berserk ("bare of shirt"); said of the ancient Germanic warriors who fought without armor. HENRY DAVID THOREAU Thoreau died at forty-four, hav- Thoreau's outward life reflected his inward stature as a small and quiet pond reflects the diminished outline of a mountain. Concord, the place where he lived and died, was tiny, but it was the center of an exciting intellectual world, and the poverty of his family did not prevent him from getting a good start in the classics at the local academy. At Harvard College in Cambridge, a few miles away, he maintained himself frugally with the help of his aunt's and by doing chores and teaching during leisure hours and vacations. There he began his Journals, ultimately to become the largest of his works, a storehouse of his observations and ideas. Upon graduation he tried teaching, and for a time conducted a private school in Concord with his brother, John; but he had no inclination toward a career in the ordinary sense. Living was the object of life, and work was never an end in itself, but merely the self-respecting means by which one paid his way in the world. While he made his home with his father, he assisted him in his trade of pencil maker, but he lost interest as soon as they had learned to make the best pencil to be had. When he lived with Emerson (1841-1843 and 1847-1848) he did the chores, and he kept the house while Emerson was abroad. At the home of Emerson's brother William, on Staten Island in 1843, he tutored the children. In Concord village, he did odd jobs, hired himself out, and surveyed other men's lands without coveting them. Meanwhile, his inward life, as recorded in the Journals, was vastly enriched by experience and steady reading. In the year of his graduation from Harvard (1837), his Concord neighbor, Emerson, made his address on The American Scholar, and both the man and the essay became Thoreau's early guide. The next year he delivered his first lecture, at the Concord Lyceum; he later gave lectures from Bangor, Maine, to Philadelphia, but never acquired Emerson's skill in communicating to his audience. On his journeys he made friends as various as Orestes Brownson, Horace Greeley, John Brown, and Walt Whitman; he and Emerson were the two who recognized Whitman's genius from the beginning. At home in Concord he attended Alcott's "conversations," and versations," and shared the intellectual excitements and stimulation of the informal Transcendental Club which met at Concord and Boston. The Club sponsored The Dial (18401844), to which he contributed essays drawn from his Journals and his study of natural history and philosophy. A number of his best poems also appeared in The Dial. His later poems were often genuinely inspired and independent. Emerson meant only praise in declaring that "his biography is in his verses"; it is true that the same lyrical response to ideas pervades his poetry, his prose, and his life. Thoreau tacitly recognized this by incorporating much of his poetry in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) and Walden (1854), the two volumes that were published before his death. But it is a mistake to suppose that the serene individualism of his writings reflects only an unbroken serenity of life. Many Massachusetts neighbors, and even some transcendentalists, regarded Thoreau as an extremist, especially on public and economic issues. There were painful clashes of temperament with Emerson. In his personal life he suffered deep bereavements. His older brother, John, who was also his best friend, revealed his love for Ellen Sewall, the girl whom Henry hoped to marry; she refused them both. Two years later, John died |