Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/198

 14, 1842; but used in part by Thoreau in the manuscripts of his Winter Walk, which were published by Emerson a year later in The Dial of October, 1843. But this scrupulous editor omitted most of the author's verses. It seems best, therefore, to print them here entire, with the prose immediately preceding them in the preserved fragment of the Journal in which they appear. The whole of the verses were originally written on pages 194-198 of the Journal for the autumn of 1842,—long since destroyed,—after using most of its contents either in The Week or in Walden.]

THE WINTER WALK

Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift fall in, and step forth like knights encased in steel—to sport with the cutting air. Still through the drifts I see the farmer's early candle—like a paled star—emitting a lonely beam from the cottage indoors as, one by one, the sluggish smoke begins to ascend from the chimneys of the farm-houses midst the trees. Thus from each domestic altar does incense go up each morning to the [142]