Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/25



was a happy thought of Thoreau's friend Ellery Channing, himself a poet, to style our Concord hermit the &quot;poet-naturalist;&quot; for there seemed to be no year of his life, and no hour of his day when Nature did not whisper some secret in his ear,—so intimate was he with her from childhood. In another connection, speaking of natural beauty, Channing said, &quot;There is Thoreau,—he knows about it; give him sunshine and a handful of nuts, and he has enough.&quot; He was also a naturalist in the more customary sense,—one who studied and arranged methodically in his mind the facts of outward nature; a good botanist and ornithologist, a wise student of insects and fishes; an observer of the winds, the clouds, the seasons, and all that goes to make up what we call &quot;weather&quot; and &quot;climate.&quot; Yet he was in heart a poet, and held all the accumulated knowledge of more than forty years not so much for use as for delight. As Gray’s poor friend West said of himself, &quot;Like a