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To the Maiden in the East*

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
Behind the gnarled limbs 5
Of yonder hill,
Conveys thy gentle will.

Believe I knew thy thought,
And that the zephyrs brought
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.

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.

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.

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,

4. The source for the present text is
that of the poem's first appearance, in
The Dial, No. X, October 1842. Thoreau
inserted it in somewhat altered form in
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers (1849). The poem was collected

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in a posthumous volume, Poems of
Nature (1895).

5. In the 1849 edition of A Week
line 6 reads: "Above the gnarled limbs."
6. Stanzas 5 through 7 are not present
in A Week ... (1849).

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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.

7. First published in The Dial for Octo-
ber, 1842, and reprinted in Thoreau's
"Thursday" chapter of A Week on the
Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849),

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1842, 1849

as given here. The version in The Poems of Nature (1895) shows slight variants in punctuation and indentation.

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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.

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?

Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn,
If red or black 8 the gods will favor most,
Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn,
Struggling to heave some rock against the host.

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.

This bed of herd's-grass and wild oats was spread
Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use,
A clover tuft is pillow for my head,
And violets quite overtop my shoes.

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.

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.

Drip, drip the trees for all the country round,
And richness rare distills from every bough,
The wind alone it is makes every sound,
Shaking down crystals on the leaves below.

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.

8. Cf. the battle of the red and black ants in "Brute Neighbors," in Walden, also described in Homeric terms. There

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the champion ant is called Achilles; in the present passage the hero is Ajax.

Haze9

Woof of the sun, 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, firth 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.

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1843, 1849

1 Smoke 1

Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,2
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight;
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as they 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.

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9. One of the vignettes captioned "Orphics" published in The Dial for April, 1843, this was reprinted without title in Thoreau's "Tuesday" chapter of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). In reprinting this, with other poems, in Letters *** (1865), Emerson changed "fen" to "sun" in the first line, and this reading occurs in numerous later editions, but not in Poems of Nature (1895).

1. One of the vignettes captioned "Orphics" published in The Dial for April, 1843, this was reprinted in "Housewarming" in Walden (1854), following

the sentence: "When the villagers were lighting their fires beyond the horizon, I too gave notice to the various wild inhabitants of Walden vale, by a smoky streamer from my chimney, that I was awake." The Walden text is identical with that of Poems of Nature, except for a comma at the end of 1. 2.

2. Daedalus, mythical artisan of the Greeks, escaped his enemies on wings made of feathers and wax, but Icarus, his son, melted his by flying too near the sun, and plunged to his death.

3. "Inspiration," one of Thoreau's best poems, is also important because it re

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.

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;

Making my soul accomplice there

Unto the flame my heart hath lit,

Then will the verse forever wear

Time cannot bend the line which God hath writ.

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.

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.

I hearing get, who had but ears,

And sight, who had but eyes before,

I moments live, who lived but years,

And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore.

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.

A clear and ancient harmony

Pierces my soul through all its din,
As through its utmost melody,-

Farther behind than they, farther within.

flects his transcendental ideas as applied to creative expression, especially poetry. Not published in its entirety during Thoreau's life, this poem was conceived early-fragments of it appear in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) as a kind of commentary on the ideas of this first prose volume. In his "Monday" chapter the reader will find 11. 29-30, 11. 39-40, and also a curious six-line combination of 11. 45-46 with the stanza beginning 1. 69. In "Friday" one finds the quatrain beginning 1. 25; all of these passages emphasize the transcendentalist's reliance

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on revealed or intuitional truth. Modern anthologies give several abbreviated versions of the poem, resulting from the publication of two different abbreviated texts soon after Thoreau's death. The first was of seven stanzas, not consecutive, in the Boston Commonwealth for June 19, 1863. The second, consisting of the first six of these stanzas, was included by Emerson in the Letters *** (1865). Our text reprints the twentyone stanzas as they were printed (from a manuscript) in Poems of Nature (1895).

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