In all our leaf-hid Sybaris ; The good old time, close-hidden here, While Roundheads prim, with point of fox, Insults thy statues, royal Past; Myself too prone the axe to wield, I touch the silver side of the shield How chanced it that so long I tost Oh, might we but of such rare days Far-shrined from earth's bestaining strife. In our vext world here may not be, Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hut Torn from the consecration deep The soul one gracious block may draw, And lure some nunlike thoughts to take The Beggar A BEGGAR through the world am I,— From place to place I wander by. Fill up my pilgrim's scrip for me, For Christ's sweet sake and charity! A little of thy steadfastness, Rounded with leafy gracefulness. Old oak, give me,— That the world's blasts may round me blow, And I yield gently to and fro, While my stout-hearted trunk below And firm-set roots unshaken be. Some of thy stern, unyielding might, Rude tempest-shock and withering blight,— The changeful April sky of chance And the strong tide of circumstance,— Some of thy pensiveness serene, Some of thy never-dying green, Put in this scrip of mine, That griefs may fall like snow-flakes light, A little of thy merriment, Ye have been very kind and good I've far to go ere set of sun; Of all good things I would have part, Heaven help me! how could I forget That blossoms here as well, unseen, The Simple Life I THOREAU LEARNED this, at least by experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the licence of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Life in the Woods I WENT to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of a man here to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever. The |