Henry David Thoreau Poems

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 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...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 Here lies the body of this world, 
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled. 
This golden youth long since was past, 
Its silver manhood went as fast, 
An iron age drew on at last; 
'Tis vain its character to tell, 
The several fates which it befell, 
What year it died, when 'twill arise, 
We only know that here it...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 I think awhile of Love, and while I think, 
Love is to me a world, 
Sole meat and sweetest drink, 
And close connecting link 
Tween heaven and earth. 
I only know it is, not how or why, 
My greatest happiness; 
However hard I try, 
Not if I were to die, 
Can I explain. 

I fain would ask my friend...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature 
-- not his Father but his Mother stirs 
within him, and he becomes immortal with her
immortality. From time to time she claims 
kindredship with us, and some globule 
from her veins steals up into our own.

I am the autumnal sun,
With autumn gales my race is run;
When will the hazel put forth its...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 I knew a man by sight, 
A blameless wight, 
Who, for a year or more, 
Had daily passed my door, 
Yet converse none had had with him. 
I met him in a lane, 
Him and his cane, 
About three miles from home, 
Where I had chanced to roam, 
And volumes stared at him, and he at me. 

In a...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 Indeed, indeed, I cannot tell,
Though I ponder on it well,
Which were easier to state,
All my love or all my hate.
Surely, surely, thou wilt trust me
When I say thou dost disgust me.
O, I hate thee with a hate
That would fain annihilate;
Yet sometimes against my will,
My dear friend, I love thee still.
It were treason to our love,
And a sin to God...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 Whate'er we leave to God, God does, 
And blesses us; 
The work we choose should be our own, 
God leaves alone. 
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...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers."

Let such pure hate still underprop 
Our love, that we may be 
Each other's conscience, 
And have our sympathy 
Mainly from thence. 

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. 

Two solitary stars-- 
Unmeasured systems far 
Between...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 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!...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 My life has been the poem I would have writ, 
But I could not both live and utter it....Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 On fields o'er which the reaper's hand has pass'd
Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun,
My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind
And of such fineness as October airs,
There after harvest could I glean my life
A richer harvest reaping without toil,
And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will
In subtler webs than finest summer haze....Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 Pray to what earth does this sweet cold belong,
Which asks no duties and no conscience?
The moon goes up by leaps, her cheerful path
In some far summer stratum of the sky,
While stars with their cold shine bedot her way.
The fields gleam mildly back upon the sky,
And far and near upon the leafless shrubs
The snow dust still emits a silver light.
Under...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 Great God, I ask 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. 
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...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 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. 
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. 

A nosegay...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 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...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 Packed in my mind lie all the clothes 
Which outward nature wears, 
And in its fashion's hourly change 
It all things else repairs. 
In vain I look for change abroad, 
And can no difference find, 
Till some new ray of peace uncalled 
Illumes my inmost mind. 

What is it gilds the trees and clouds, 
And paints the heavens so...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 Time wears her not; she doth his chariot guide; 
Mortality below her orb is placed.
--Raleigh

The full-orbed moon with unchanged ray 
Mounts up the eastern sky, 
Not doomed to these short nights for aye, 
But shining steadily. 

She does not wane, but my fortune, 
Which her rays do not bless, 
My wayward path declineth soon, 
But she shines not the...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 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. 
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...Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 What's the railroad to me?
I never go to see
Where it ends.
It fills a few hollows,
And makes banks for the swallows,
It sets the sand a-blowing,
And the blackberries a-growing....Read more of this...

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by Thoreau, Henry David

 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...Read more of this...

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