Walden

cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and life loses its
crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live.  I never
dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed.  I never
knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
    I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy
with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of
God, is his private ail.  Let this be righted, let the spring come
to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his
generous companions without apology.  My excuse for not lecturing
against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it, that is a
penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are
things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against.  If you
should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let
your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth
knowing.  Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings.  Take your
time, and set about some free labor.
    Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the
saints.  Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and
enduring Him forever.  One would say that even the prophets and
redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of
man.  There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible
satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God.
All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn
it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does
me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.
If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly Indian, botanic,
magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as simple and well as
Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows,
and take up a little life into our pores.  Do not stay to be an
overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of
the world.
    I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of
Shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying: Of the many celebrated
trees which the Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they
call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no
fruit; what mystery is there in this?  He replied, Each has its
appropriate produce, and appointed season, during the continuance of
which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence dry and
withered; to neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being
always flourishing; and of this nature are the azads, or religious
independents. -- Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for
the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad after
the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal
as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an
azad, or free man, like the cypress."

                        COMPLEMENTAL VERSES
                    The Pretensions of Poverty
          Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,
          To claim a station in the firmament
          Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,
          Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue
          In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,
          With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,
          Tearing those humane passions from the mind,
          Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,
          Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,
          And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.
          We not require the dull society
          Of your necessitated temperance,
          Or that unnatural stupidity
          That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd
          Falsely exalted passive fortitude
          Above the active.  This low abject brood,
          That fix their seats in mediocrity,
          Become your servile minds; but we advance
          Such virtues only as admit excess,
          Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,
          All-seeing prudence, magnanimity
          That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue
          For which antiquity hath left no name,
          But patterns only, such as Hercules,
          Achilles, Theseus.  Back to thy loath'd cell;
          And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,
          Study to know but what those worthies were.
                                 T. CAREW


                Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

    At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider
every spot as the possible site of a house.  I have thus surveyed
the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live.  In
imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were
to be bought, and I knew their price.  I walked over each farmer's
premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him,
took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my
mind; even put a higher price on it -- took everything but a deed of
it -- took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk --
cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew
when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on.  This
experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate
broker by my friends.  Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the
landscape radiated from me accordingly.  What is a house but a
sedes, a seat? -- better if a country seat.  I discovered many a
site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might
have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village
was too far from it.  Well, there I might live, I said; and there I
did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could
let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring