Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WALDEN, by HENRY DAVID THOREAU


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WALDEN, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: True, our converse a stranger is to speech
Last Line: First dipped their pens in mist.
Subject(s): Walden Pond, Massachusetts


-- True, our converse a stranger is to speech,
Only the practised ear can catch the surging words,
That break and die upon thy pebbled lips.
Thy flow of thought is noiseless as the lapse of thy own waters,
Wafted as is the morning mist up from thy surface,
So that the passive Soul doth breathe it in,
And is infected with the truth thou wouldst express.

E'en the remotest stars have come in troops
And stooped low to catch the benediction
Of thy countenance. Oft as the day came round,
Impartial has the sun exhibited himself
Before thy narrow skylight -- nor has the moon
For cycles failed to roll this way
As oft as elsewhither, and tell thee of the night.
No cloud so rare but hitherward it stalked,
And in thy face looked doubly beautiful.
O! tell me what the winds have writ within these thousand years,
On the blue vault that spans thy flood --
Or sun transferred and delicately reprinted
For thy own private reading. Somewhat
Within these latter days I've read,
But surely there was much that would have thrilled the Soul,
Which human eye saw not
I would give much to read that first bright page,
Wet from a virgin press, when Eurus -- Boreas --
And the host of airy quill-drivers
First dipped their pens in mist.





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