Page:Sir Walter Raleigh by Thoreau, Henry David,.djvu/31

 contemporary answers, written during his lifetime, and reproaching him with the poem, by name or implication." Thoreau had at first taken it for Ralegh's without doubt; then found, in a newspaper of 1843, a version of it ascribed to Joshua Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas, which led him to doubt its being Ralegh's, and to alter his version of the text. This later version he read at the Concord funeral of John Brown (December 2, 1859), prefacing it with these words: "The well-known verses called The Soul's Errand, supposed by some to have been written by Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was expecting to be executed on the following day, are at least worthy of such an origin, and are equally applicable to the present case. Hear them,"—and he proceeded to read them in my hearing. But on a blank page in the scrap-book he wrote in pencil, "Assigned to Raleigh by Percy, as written the night before his execution. But it appeared in Poetical Rhapsody in 1608, yet, as Davison says, may have been written the night before he expected to have been executed in 1603. It is found among