Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/124

 I can read only my own story, never a syllable of another man's.

Friday, October 6.

Gleams of life and a wise serenity pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather. In some happier moment, when more sap flows in the withered stalk of my life, I recognize myself as a part of the hour, and Syria and India stretch away from my present as they do in history.

Sunday, October 8.

Daniel, the poet, does really sometimes deserve praise for his moderation, and you find him risen into poetry before you know it. Some strong sense appears in his epistles; but you have to remember so often in what age he wrote, and yet that Shakespeare was his contemporary. In his style, and what may be called the tricks of the trade, he is really in advance of his age,—much of it.

He strikes us like a retired scholar who has a small vein of poesy, which he is ambitious to work. He would keep himself [76]