Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/22

x He did those acts also; but they were not the whole man. He was far more poet than cynic or stoic; he had the proud humility of those sects, but still more largely that unconscious pride which comes to the poet when he sees that his pursuits are those of the few and not of the multitude. This perception came early to Thoreau, and was expressed in some unpublished verses dating from his long, solitary rambles, by night and day, on the seashore at Staten Island, where he first learned the sombre magnificence of Ocean. He feigns himself the son of what might well be one of Homer's fishermen, or the shipwrecked seaman of Lucretius,—

and then goes on thus with his parable:—

Within a humble cot that looks to sea Daily I breathe this curious warm life, Beneath a friendly haven's sheltering lea My noiseless day with mystery still is rife. 'T is here, they say, my simple life began,— And easy credence to the tale I lend, For well I know 't is here I am a man,— But who will simply tell me of the end?