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1845

1856

If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut."

1846, 1847

Brahma2

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;

Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;

And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,

And pine in vain the sacred Seven,3
But thou, meek lover of the good!

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

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1857, 1867

Days*

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and

2. Brahma is the Hindu supreme soul of
the universe-an uncreated, illimitable,
and timeless essence or being. Emerson,
discussing with his daughter the per-
plexity into which his poem had thrown
many, said "Tell them to say Jehovah in-
stead of Brahma." The poem is an ex-
position of the erroneous relativity of
human and temporal perception, as com-
pared with the sublime harmony of
cosmic divinity. The images of the poem
are presumably based on certain extracts
in Emerson's Journals from the Vishnu
Purana, extensively discussed in the

sky that holds them all.

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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,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily

Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

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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
Their colors from the sky;

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
Fantastic care derides,

But in the serious landscape lone
Stern benefit abides.

Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
And merry is only a mask of sad,
But, sober on a fund of joy,
The woods at heart are glad.

There the great Planter plants
Of fruitful worlds the grain,

And with a million spells enchants
The souls that walk in pain.

Still on the seeds of all he made

The rose of beauty burns;

Through times that wear and forms that fade,
Immortal youth returns.

4. In which the branches of trees or
shrubs are interwoven ("pleached"),
making them flat-hence formal, arti-
ficial.

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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 pigeon in the pines,

The bittern's boom, a desert make
Which no false art refines.

Down in yon watery nook,
Where bearded mists divide,

The gray old gods whom Chaos knew,
The sires of Nature, hide.

Aloft, in secret veins of air,
Blows the sweet breath of song,

O, few to scale those uplands dare,
Though they to all belong!

See thou bring not to field or stone
The fancies found in books;

Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own,
To brave the landscape's looks.

Oblivion here thy wisdom is,
Thy thrift, the sleep of cares;
For a proud idleness like this
Crowns all thy mean affairs.

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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;
Economize the failing river,

Nor the less revere the Giver,

6. Terminus was the Roman deity of boundaries; the poem, of course, has autobiographical significance. It ap

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peared in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1867, and the same year in the May-Day volume.

Leave the many and hold the few.
Timely wise accept the terms,
Soften the fall with wary foot;
A little while

Still plan and smile,

And, fault of novel germs,
Mature the unfallen fruit.
Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,
Bad husbands of their fires,

Who, when they gave thee breath,
Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark as once,

The Baresark marrow to thy bones,
But left a legacy of ebbing veins,
Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,-

Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,
Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.'

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:
'Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed."'

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1867

7. I.e., berserk ("bare of shirt"); said of the ancient Germanic warriors who fought without armor.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU
(1817-1862)

Thoreau died at forty-four, hav-
ing published relatively little of
what he had written. He ex-
pressed his characteristic di-
lemma when he declared: "My
life has been the poem I would
have writ,/ But I could not both
live and utter it." At his best, per-
haps he succeeded in doing just
that.

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

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