Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/130

 Then is there need To fill his grave; And, truth to save, That we should read,— In Pursy's favor Here lies the engraver.

This and the following lines appear to be Thoreau's own composition,—suggested, perhaps, by some collection of epitaphs he had found in one of the New York libraries, where he had been industriously reading Donne, Daniel, Quarles, Lovelace, etc., and was soon to read fragments of Ossianic poetry, on which he comments in The Week.

EPITAPH ON THE WORLD

Donne was not a poet, but a man of strong sense,—a sturdy English thinker, full of [82]