Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/146

 The older and grander poems are characterized by the few elements which distinguish the life they describe. Man stands on the moor between the stars and the earth,—shrunk to the mere bones and sinews. It is the uncompounded, everlasting life which does not depart with the flesh. The civilized and the uncivilized eras chronicle but the fluctuating condition; the summer or winter lean upon the past estate of man.

Our summer of English poesy, which, like the Greek and Latin before it, seems now well advanced toward its fall, is laden with the fruit and foliage of that season, with all the bright tints of autumn; but the winter of age will scatter its myriad clustering and shading leaves, with their autumnal tints, and leave only the desolate and fibrous boughs to sustain the snow and rime, and creak in the winter's wind.

Man simply lives out his years by the vigor of his constitution. He survives storms and the spear of his foes, and performs a few heroic deeds, and then the cairns answer questions of him. The Scandinavian is not encumbered with modern fashions, but stands [98]