Page:The writings of Henry David Thoreau, v2.djvu/139



COMPLEMENTAL VERSES.

The Pretensions of Poverty.

 * Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,
 * To claim a station in the firmament
 * Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,
 * Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue
 * In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,
 * With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,
 * Tearing those humane passions from the mind,
 * Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,
 * Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,
 * And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.
 * We not require the dull society
 * Of your necessitated temperance,
 * Or that unnatural stupidity
 * That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd
 * Falsely exalted passive fortitude
 * Above the active. This low abject brood,
 * That fix their seats in mediocrity,
 * Become your servile minds; but we advance
 * Such virtues only as admit excess,
 * Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,
 * All-seeing prudence, magnanimity
 * That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue
 * For which antiquity hath left no name,
 * But patterns only, such as Hercules,
 * Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath'd cell;
 * And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,
 * Study to know but what those worthies were.

T. CAREW

Walden ou la vie dans les bois/1