{"id":1462,"date":"2009-04-24T21:20:08","date_gmt":"2009-04-25T04:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.candlelightstories.com\/?p=1462"},"modified":"2009-04-29T13:19:05","modified_gmt":"2009-04-29T20:19:05","slug":"podcast-of-henry-david-thoreau-on-poetry-and-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/2009\/04\/24\/podcast-of-henry-david-thoreau-on-poetry-and-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast of Henry David Thoreau on Poetry and Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"486px-henry_david_thoreau\"<\/object><\/p>\n

DOWNLOAD MP3 AUDIO<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1839, Henry David Thoreau<\/em><\/a> and his brother made a river voyage in a boat that they built themselves. This voyage became the subject of Thoreau’s first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers<\/em>, published in 1849 at his own expense. In this thirty-three minute excerpt, Thoreau finds himself describing the incredible beauty and serenity of the natural scene around him. But his mind wanders into a profound examination of poetry and the requirements of good writing. His call to man for a life of poetry and his demand that writers create simply from an impulse to action are powerful and true. I don’t think there is a better piece of advice that exists for writers and readers alike.<\/p>\n

Thoreau frequently quotes from Homer’s Iliad<\/em><\/a> and other sources in this piece. I have tried to separate his quotes with pauses and a change in reading tone. You might want to glance at the actual words as you listen for clarification.<\/p>\n

Here is the text of the reading:<\/p>\n

What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which
\nwould be in harmony with the scenery,–for if men read aright,
\nmethinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor
\nphilosophy can supply their place.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The wisest definition of poetry the poet will instantly prove
\nfalse by setting aside its requisitions. We can, therefore,
\npublish only our advertisement of it.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either
\nrhymed, or in some way musically measured,–is, in form as well
\nas substance, poetry; and a volume which should contain the
\ncondensed wisdom of mankind need not have one rhythmless line.<\/p>\n

Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural
\nfruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a
\ngourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief
\nand most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative
\nof poetic deeds. What else have the Hindoos, the Persians, the
\nBabylonians, the Egyptians done, that can be told? It is the
\nsimplest relation of phenomena, and describes the commonest
\nsensations with more truth than science does, and the latter at a
\ndistance slowly mimics its style and methods. The poet sings how
\nthe blood flows in his veins. He performs his functions, and is
\nso well that he needs such stimulus to sing only as plants to put
\nforth leaves and blossoms. He would strive in vain to modulate
\nthe remote and transient music which he sometimes hears, since
\nhis song is a vital function like breathing, and an integral
\nresult like weight. It is not the overflowing of life but its
\nsubsidence rather, and is drawn from under the feet of the poet.
\nIt is enough if Homer but say the sun sets. He is as serene as
\nnature, and we can hardly detect the enthusiasm of the bard. It
\nis as if nature spoke. He presents to us the simplest pictures
\nof human life, so the child itself can understand them, and the
\nman must not think twice to appreciate his naturalness. Each
\nreader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler
\nfeatures of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than
\ncopy his similes. His more memorable passages are as naturally
\nbright as gleams of sunshine in misty weather. Nature furnishes
\nhim not only with words, but with stereotyped lines and sentences
\nfrom her mint.<\/p>\n

“As from the clouds appears the full moon,
\nAll shining, and then again it goes behind the shadowy clouds,
\nSo Hector, at one time appeared among the foremost,
\nAnd at another in the rear, commanding; and all with brass
\nHe shone, like to the lightning of aegis-bearing Zeus.”<\/p>\n

He conveys the least information, even the hour of the day, with
\nsuch magnificence and vast expense of natural imagery, as if it
\nwere a message from the gods.<\/p>\n

“While it was dawn, and sacred day was advancing,
\nFor that space the weapons of both flew fast, and the people fell;
\nBut when now the woodcutter was preparing his morning meal,
\nIn the recesses of the mountain, and had wearied his hands
\nWith cutting lofty trees, and satiety came to his mind,
\nAnd the desire of sweet food took possession of his thoughts;
\nThen the Danaans, by their valor, broke the phalanxes,
\nShouting to their companions from rank to rank.”<\/p>\n

When the army of the Trojans passed the night under arms, keeping
\nwatch lest the enemy should re-embark under cover of the dark,<\/p>\n

“They, thinking great things, upon the neutral ground of war
\nSat all the night; and many fires burned for them.
\nAs when in the heavens the stars round the bright moon
\nAppear beautiful, and the air is without wind;
\nAnd all the heights, and the extreme summits,
\nAnd the wooded sides of the mountains appear; and from the
\nheavens an Infinite ether is diffused,
\nAnd all the stars are seen, and the shepherd rejoices in his heart;
\nSo between the ships and the streams of Xanthus
\nAppeared the fires of the Trojans before Ilium.
\nA thousand fires burned on the plain, and by each
\nSat fifty, in the light of the blazing fire;
\nAnd horses eating white barley and corn,
\nStanding by the chariots, awaited fair-throned Aurora.”<\/p>\n

The “white-armed goddess Juno,” sent by the Father of gods and
\nmen for Iris and Apollo,<\/p>\n

“Went down the Idaean mountains to far Olympus,
\nAs when the mind of a man, who has come over much earth,
\nSallies forth, and he reflects with rapid thoughts,
\nThere was I, and there, and remembers many things;
\nSo swiftly the august Juno hastening flew through the air,
\nAnd came to high Olympus.”<\/p>\n

His scenery is always true, and not invented. He does not leap in
\nimagination from Asia to Greece, through mid air,<\/p>\n

<epei_e` ma’la polla` metaxy’
\nOurea’ te skioe’nta, thala’ssa te _ech_e’essa.><\/p>\n

for there are very many
\nShady mountains and resounding seas between.<\/p>\n

If his messengers repair but to the tent of Achilles, we do not
\nwonder how they got there, but accompany them step by step along
\nthe shore of the resounding sea. Nestor’s account of the march
\nof the Pylians against the Epeians is extremely lifelike:–<\/p>\n

“Then rose up to them sweet-worded Nestor, the shrill orator
\nof the Pylians,
\nAnd words sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue.”<\/p>\n

This time, however, he addresses Patroclus alone: “A certain
\nriver, Minyas by name, leaps seaward near to Arene, where we
\nPylians wait the dawn, both horse and foot. Thence with all
\nhaste we sped us on the morrow ere ‘t was noonday, accoutred for
\nthe fight, even to Alpheus’s sacred source,” &c. We fancy that
\nwe hear the subdued murmuring of the Minyas discharging its
\nwaters into the main the livelong night, and the hollow sound of
\nthe waves breaking on the shore,–until at length we are cheered
\nat the close of a toilsome march by the gurgling fountains of
\nAlpheus.<\/p>\n

There are few books which are fit to be remembered in our wisest
\nhours, but the Iliad is brightest in the serenest days, and
\nembodies still all the sunlight that fell on Asia Minor. No
\nmodern joy or ecstasy of ours can lower its height or dim its
\nlustre, but there it lies in the east of literature, as it were
\nthe earliest and latest production of the mind. The ruins of
\nEgypt oppress and stifle us with their dust, foulness preserved
\nin cassia and pitch, and swathed in linen; the death of that
\nwhich never lived. But the rays of Greek poetry struggle down to
\nus, and mingle with the sunbeams of the recent day. The statue
\nof Memnon is cast down, but the shaft of the Iliad still meets
\nthe sun in his rising.<\/p>\n

“Homer is gone; and where is Jove? and where
\nThe rival cities seven? His song outlives
\nTime, tower, and god,–all that then was, save Heaven.”<\/p>\n

So too, no doubt, Homer had his Homer, and Orpheus his Orpheus,
\nin the dim antiquity which preceded them. The mythological
\nsystem of the ancients, and it is still the mythology of the
\nmoderns, the poem of mankind, interwoven so wonderfully with
\ntheir astronomy, and matching in grandeur and harmony the
\narchitecture of the heavens themselves, seems to point to a time
\nwhen a mightier genius inhabited the earth. But, after all, man
\nis the great poet, and not Homer nor Shakespeare; and our
\nlanguage itself, and the common arts of life, are his work.
\nPoetry is so universally true and independent of experience, that
\nit does not need any particular biography to illustrate it, but
\nwe refer it sooner or later to some Orpheus or Linus, and after
\nages to the genius of humanity and the gods themselves.<\/p>\n

It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books are
\nthe society we keep; to read only the serenely true; never
\nstatistics, nor fiction, nor news, nor reports, nor periodicals,
\nbut only great poems, and when they failed, read them again, or
\nperchance write more. Instead of other sacrifice, we might offer
\nup our perfect (<telei’a>) thoughts to the gods daily, in hymns or
\npsalms. For we should be at the helm at least once a day. The
\nwhole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour,
\nif no more, which the day did not bring forth. Scholars are wont
\nto sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But is it
\nnecessary to know what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless
\nstudy, or the idle read, the literature of the Russians and the
\nChinese, or even French philosophy and much of German criticism.
\nRead the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read
\nthem at all. “There are the worshippers with offerings, and the
\nworshippers with mortifications; and again the worshippers with
\nenthusiastic devotion; so there are those the wisdom of whose
\nreading is their worship, men of subdued passions and severe
\nmanners;–This world is not for him who doth not worship; and
\nwhere, O Arjoon, is there another?” Certainly, we do not need to
\nbe soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts
\nto the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if
\nhe took a nap. The front aspect of great thoughts can only be
\nenjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive.
\nBooks, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which
\neach thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot
\nread, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even
\nmake us dangerous to existing institutions,–such call I good
\nbooks.<\/p>\n

All that are printed and bound are not books; they do not
\nnecessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with
\nthe other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares
\nare palmed off under a thousand disguises. “The way to trade,”
\nas a pedler once told me, “is to _put it right through_,” no
\nmatter what it is, anything that is agreed on.<\/p>\n

“You grov’ling worldlings, you whose wisdom trades
\nWhere light ne’er shot his golden ray.”<\/p>\n

By dint of able writing and pen-craft, books are cunningly
\ncompiled, and have their run and success even among the learned,
\nas if they were the result of a new man’s thinking, and their
\nbirth were attended with some natural throes. But in a little
\nwhile their covers fall off, for no binding will avail, and it
\nappears that they are not Books or Bibles at all. There are new
\nand patented inventions in this shape, purporting to be for the
\nelevation of the race, which many a pure scholar and genius who
\nhas learned to read is for a moment deceived by, and finds
\nhimself reading a horse-rake, or spinning-jenny, or wooden
\nnutmeg, or oak-leaf cigar, or steam-power press, or kitchen
\nrange, perchance, when he was seeking serene and biblical truths.<\/p>\n

“Merchants, arise,
\nAnd mingle conscience with your merchandise.”<\/p>\n

Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before
\nthey write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat
\nand potatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the
\nRepublic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely,
\nas others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into
\nbrandy. Books are for the most part wilfully and hastily
\nwritten, as parts of a system, to supply a want real or imagined.
\nBooks of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or
\ninventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the
\nleast teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or
\nrather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to
\nconduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the
\nprofessors always dwell.<\/p>\n

“To Athens gowned he goes, and from that school
\nReturns unsped, a more instructed fool.”<\/p>\n

They teach the elements really of ignorance, not of knowledge,
\nfor, to speak deliberately and in view of the highest truths, it
\nis not easy to distinguish elementary knowledge. There is a
\nchasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science
\ncan never span. A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses
\nof _terra firma_, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art
\nof navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.
\n_They_ must not yield wheat and potatoes, but must themselves be
\nthe unconstrained and natural harvest of their author’s lives.<\/p>\n

“What I have learned is mine; I’ve had my thought,
\nAnd me the Muses noble truths have taught.”<\/p>\n

We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere,
\nhuman books, from frank and honest biographies. The life of a
\ngood man will hardly improve us more than the life of a
\nfreebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the
\ninfringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by
\na nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying
\ntree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less
\nthan the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions
\nof health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The
\ngnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.<\/p>\n

At least let us have healthy books, a stout horse-rake or a
\nkitchen range which is not cracked. Let not the poet shed tears
\nonly for the public weal. He should be as vigorous as a
\nsugar-maple, with sap enough to maintain his own verdure, beside
\nwhat runs into the troughs, and not like a vine, which being cut
\nin the spring bears no fruit, but bleeds to death in the endeavor
\nto heal its wounds. The poet is he that hath fat enough, like
\nbears and marmots, to suck his claws all winter. He hibernates
\nin this world, and feeds on his own marrow. We love to think in
\nwinter, as we walk over the snowy pastures, of those happy
\ndreamers that lie under the sod, of dormice and all that race of
\ndormant creatures, which have such a superfluity of life
\nenveloped in thick folds of fur, impervious to cold. Alas, the
\npoet too is, in one sense, a sort of dormouse gone into winter
\nquarters of deep and serene thoughts, insensible to surrounding
\ncircumstances; his words are the relation of his oldest and
\nfinest memory, a wisdom drawn from the remotest experience.
\nOther men lead a starved existence, meanwhile, like hawks, that
\nwould fain keep on the wing, and trust to pick up a sparrow now
\nand then.<\/p>\n

There are already essays and poems, the growth of this land,
\nwhich are not in vain, all which, however, we could conveniently
\nhave stowed in the till of our chest. If the gods permitted
\ntheir own inspiration to be breathed in vain, these might be
\noverlooked in the crowd, but the accents of truth are as sure to
\nbe heard at last on earth as in heaven. They already seem
\nancient, and in some measure have lost the traces of their modern
\nbirth. Here are they who<\/p>\n

“ask for that which is our whole life’s light,
\nFor the perpetual, true and clear insight.”<\/p>\n

I remember a few sentences which spring like the sward in its
\nnative pasture, where its roots were never disturbed, and not as
\nif spread over a sandy embankment; answering to the poet’s
\nprayer,<\/p>\n

“Let us set so just
\nA rate on knowledge, that the world may trust
\nThe poet’s sentence, and not still aver
\nEach art is to itself a flatterer.”<\/p>\n

But, above all, in our native port, did we not frequent the
\npeaceful games of the Lyceum, from which a new era will be dated
\nto New England, as from the games of Greece. For if Herodotus
\ncarried his history to Olympia to read, after the cestus and the
\nrace, have we not heard such histories recited there, which since
\nour countrymen have read, as made Greece sometimes to be
\nforgotten?–Philosophy, too, has there her grove and portico, not
\nwholly unfrequented in these days.<\/p>\n

Lately the victor, whom all Pindars praised, has won another
\npalm, contending with<\/p>\n

“Olympian bards who sung
\nDivine ideas below,
\nWhich always find us young,
\nAnd always keep us so.”<\/p>\n

What earth or sea, mountain or stream, or Muses’ spring or grove,
\nis safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives off
\nPhoebus’ beaten track, visits unwonted zones, makes the gelid
\nHyperboreans glow, and the old polar serpent writhe, and many a
\nNile flow back and hide his head!<\/p>\n

That Phaeton of our day,
\nWho’d make another milky way,
\nAnd burn the world up with his ray;<\/p>\n

By us an undisputed seer,–
\nWho’d drive his flaming car so near
\nUnto our shuddering mortal sphere,<\/p>\n

Disgracing all our slender worth,
\nAnd scorching up the living earth,
\nTo prove his heavenly birth.<\/p>\n

The silver spokes, the golden tire,
\nAre glowing with unwonted fire,
\nAnd ever nigher roll and nigher;<\/p>\n

The pins and axle melted are,
\nThe silver radii fly afar,
\nAh, he will spoil his Father’s car!<\/p>\n

Who let him have the steeds he cannot steer?
\nHenceforth the sun will not shine for a year;
\nAnd we shall Ethiops all appear.<\/p>\n

From _his_<\/p>\n

“lips of cunning fell
\nThe thrilling Delphic oracle.”<\/p>\n

And yet, sometimes,<\/p>\n

We should not mind if on our ear there fell
\nSome less of cunning, more of oracle.<\/p>\n

It is Apollo shining in your face. O rare Contemporary, let us
\nhave far-off heats. Give us the subtler, the heavenlier though
\nfleeting beauty, which passes through and through, and dwells not
\nin the verse; even pure water, which but reflects those tints
\nwhich wine wears in its grain. Let epic trade-winds blow, and
\ncease this waltz of inspirations. Let us oftener feel even the
\ngentle southwest wind upon our cheeks blowing from the Indian’s
\nheaven. What though we lose a thousand meteors from the sky, if
\nskyey depths, if star-dust and undissolvable nebulae remain?
\nWhat though we lose a thousand wise responses of the oracle, if
\nwe may have instead some natural acres of Ionian earth?<\/p>\n

Though we know well,<\/p>\n

“That’t is not in the power of kings [or presidents] to raise
\nA spirit for verse that is not born thereto,
\nNor are they born in every prince’s days”;<\/p>\n

yet spite of all they sang in praise of their “Eliza’s reign,” we
\nhave evidence that poets may be born and sing in _our_ day, in
\nthe presidency of James K. Polk,<\/p>\n

“And that the utmost powers of English rhyme,”
\n_Were not_ “within _her_ peaceful reign confined.”<\/p>\n

The prophecy of the poet Daniel is already how much more than
\nfulfilled!<\/p>\n

“And who in time knows whither we may vent
\nThe treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores
\nThis gain of our best glory shall be sent,
\nT’ enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
\nWhat worlds in th’ yet unformed occident,
\nMay come refined with the accents that are ours.”<\/p>\n

Enough has been said in these days of the charm of fluent
\nwriting. We hear it complained of some works of genius, that
\nthey have fine thoughts, but are irregular and have no flow. But
\neven the mountain peaks in the horizon are, to the eye of
\nscience, parts of one range. We should consider that the flow of
\nthought is more like a tidal wave than a prone river, and is the
\nresult of a celestial influence, not of any declivity in its
\nchannel. The river flows because it runs down hill, and flows
\nthe faster the faster it descends. The reader who expects to
\nfloat down stream for the whole voyage, may well complain of
\nnauseating swells and choppings of the sea when his frail
\nshore-craft gets amidst the billows of the ocean stream, which
\nflows as much to sun and moon as lesser streams to it. But if we
\nwould appreciate the flow that is in these books, we must expect
\nto feel it rise from the page like an exhalation, and wash away
\nour critical brains like burr millstones, flowing to higher
\nlevels above and behind ourselves. There is many a book which
\nripples on like a freshet, and flows as glibly as a mill-stream
\nsucking under a causeway; and when their authors are in the full
\ntide of their discourse, Pythagoras and Plato and Jamblichus halt
\nbeside them. Their long, stringy, slimy sentences are of that
\nconsistency that they naturally flow and run together. They read
\nas if written for military men, for men of business, there is
\nsuch a despatch in them. Compared with these, the grave thinkers
\nand philosophers seem not to have got their swaddling-clothes
\noff; they are slower than a Roman army in its march, the rear
\ncamping to-night where the van camped last night. The wise
\nJamblichus eddies and gleams like a watery slough.<\/p>\n

“How many thousands never heard the name
\nOf Sidney, or of Spenser, or their books?
\nAnd yet brave fellows, and presume of fame,
\nAnd seem to bear down all the world with looks.”<\/p>\n

The ready writer seizes the pen, and shouts, Forward! Alamo and
\nFanning! and after rolls the tide of war. The very walls and
\nfences seem to travel. But the most rapid trot is no flow after
\nall; and thither, reader, you and I, at least, will not follow.<\/p>\n

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For
\nthe most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if
\nwe could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening
\nwithout their colors, or the heavens without their azure. The
\nmost attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the
\nsurest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively, as
\nif the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise,
\nthey have at least been well learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might
\nwell be studied if only for the excellence of his style, for he
\nis remarkable in the midst of so many masters. There is a
\nnatural emphasis in his style, like a man’s tread, and a
\nbreathing space between the sentences, which the best of modern
\nwriting does not furnish. His chapters are like English parks,
\nor say rather like a Western forest, where the larger growth
\nkeeps down the underwood, and one may ride on horseback through
\nthe openings. All the distinguished writers of that period
\npossess a greater vigor and naturalness than the more
\nmodern,–for it is allowed to slander our own time,–and when we
\nread a quotation from one of them in the midst of a modern
\nauthor, we seem to have come suddenly upon a greener ground, a
\ngreater depth and strength of soil. It is as if a green bough
\nwere laid across the page, and we are refreshed as by the sight
\nof fresh grass in midwinter or early spring. You have constantly
\nthe warrant of life and experience in what you read. The little
\nthat is said is eked out by implication of the much that was
\ndone. The sentences are verdurous and blooming as evergreen and
\nflowers, because they are rooted in fact and experience, but our
\nfalse and florid sentence have only the tints of flowers without
\ntheir sap or roots. All men are really most attracted by the
\nbeauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in
\nimitation of this. They prefer to be misunderstood rather than
\nto come short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the
\nepistolary style of Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller Botta,
\nbecause of “the difficulty of understanding it; there was,” he
\nsaid, “but one person at Jidda, who was capable of understanding
\nand explaining the Pasha’s correspondence.” A man’s whole life is
\ntaxed for the least thing well done. It is its net result.
\nEvery sentence is the result of a long probation. Where shall we
\nlook for standard English, but to the words of a standard man?
\nThe word which is best said came nearest to not being spoken at
\nall, for it is cousin to a deed which the speaker could have
\nbetter done. Nay, almost it must have taken the place of a deed
\nby some urgent necessity, even by some misfortune, so that the
\ntruest writer will be some captive knight, after all. And
\nperhaps the fates had such a design, when, having stored Raleigh
\nso richly with the substance of life and experience, they made
\nhim a fast prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his
\ndeeds, and transfer to his expression the emphasis and sincerity
\nof his action.<\/p>\n

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of
\nproportion to the use they commonly serve. We are amused to read
\nhow Ben Jonson engaged, that the dull masks with which the royal
\nfamily and nobility were to be entertained should be “grounded
\nupon antiquity and solid learning.” Can there be any greater
\nreproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.
\nThe necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things,
\nto the scholar is rarely well remembered; steady labor with the
\nhands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the
\nbest method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one’s
\nstyle, both of speaking and writing. If he has worked hard from
\nmorning till night, though he may have grieved that he could not
\nbe watching the train of his thoughts during that time, yet the
\nfew hasty lines which at evening record his day’s experience will
\nbe more musical and true than his freest but idle fancy could
\nhave furnished. Surely the writer is to address a world of
\nlaborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline. He will
\nnot idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before
\nnightfall in the short days of winter; but every stroke will be
\nhusbanded, and ring soberly through the wood; and so will the
\nstrokes of that scholar’s pen, which at evening record the story
\nof the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the reader,
\nlong after the echoes of his axe have died away. The scholar may
\nbe sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his
\npalms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind
\nnever makes a great and successful effort, without a
\ncorresponding energy of the body. We are often struck by the
\nforce and precision of style to which hard-working men,
\nunpractised in writing, easily attain when required to make the
\neffort. As if plainness, and vigor, and sincerity, the ornaments
\nof style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop,
\nthan in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands
\nare nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the
\ndeer, or the roots of the pine. As for the graces of expression,
\na great thought is never found in a mean dress; but though it
\nproceed from the lips of the Woloffs, the nine Muses and the
\nthree Graces will have conspired to clothe it in fit phrase. Its
\neducation has always been liberal, and its implied wit can endow
\na college. The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been
\nmade such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was
\nnot fitted to endure. The Sibyl, “speaking with inspired mouth,
\nsmileless, inornate, and unperfumed, pierces through centuries by
\nthe power of the god.” The scholar might frequently emulate the
\npropriety and emphasis of the farmer’s call to his team, and
\nconfess that if that were written it would surpass his labored
\nsentences. Whose are the truly _labored_ sentences? From the
\nweak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we
\nare glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple
\nrecord of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore
\nour tone and spirits. A sentence should read as if its author,
\nhad he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow
\ndeep and straight to the end. The scholar requires hard and
\nserious labor to give an impetus to his thought. He will learn
\nto grasp the pen firmly so, and wield it gracefully and
\neffectively, as an axe or a sword. When we consider the weak and
\nnerveless periods of some literary men, who perchance in feet and
\ninches come up to the standard of their race, and are not
\ndeficient in girth also, we are amazed at the immense sacrifice
\nof thews and sinews. What! these proportions,–these bones,–and
\nthis their work! Hands which could have felled an ox have hewed
\nthis fragile matter which would not have tasked a lady’s fingers!
\nCan this be a stalwart man’s work, who has a marrow in his back
\nand a tendon Achilles in his heel? They who set up the blocks of
\nStonehenge did somewhat, if they only laid out their strength for
\nonce, and stretched themselves.<\/p>\n

Yet, after all, the truly efficient laborer will not crowd his
\nday with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide
\nhalo of ease and leisure, and then do but what he loves best. He
\nis anxious only about the fruitful kernels of time. Though the
\nhen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides,
\nwould not have picked up materials for another. Let a man take
\ntime enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the
\nparing of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry
\nor confusion, as if the short spring days were an eternity.<\/p>\n

Then spend an age in whetting thy desire,
\nThou needs’t not _hasten_ if thou dost _stand fast_.<\/p>\n

Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed, but for resolves
\nto draw breath in. We do not directly go about the execution of
\nthe purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us and
\nramble with prepared mind, as if the half were already done. Our
\nresolution is taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds
\nfirst send a shoot downward which is fed by their own albumen,
\nere they send one upward to the light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DOWNLOAD MP3 AUDIO In 1839, Henry David Thoreau and his brother made a river voyage in a boat that they built themselves. This voyage became the subject of Thoreau’s first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, published in 1849 at his own expense. In this thirty-three minute excerpt, Thoreau finds himself describing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,88,148,119],"tags":[168,238,2496],"class_list":["post-1462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-stories","category-podcasts","category-poetry","category-writing","tag-poet","tag-thoreau","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1525,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions\/1525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}