Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/246

218 that Thoreau's romantic and poetic ideas on friendship were closely linked with his early repressed love. Moreover, his insistence on the bond of relation, which needs no explanations, was accordant with his peculiar reticence and independence, no less than his absolute sincerity. There are sentences, especially in his early writings, vibrant with memory of the tender heart-love between man and woman, while some of his later words on friendship seem iterations of this deep, unsatisfied affection. His thoughts on "Love and Chastity" are unsurpassed in beauty of concept and form;—"A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's We should not surrender ourselves heartily to any while we are conscious that another is more deserving of our love." Perchance that subtle sentence explains Thoreau's refusal to entertain thoughts of marriage, though his friends assure us that two women were quite willing, even anxious, to link their lives with his. In one letter to Emerson he makes a quiet, firm reference to such fact and his immediate decision. ("Familiar Letters," p. 116.)

His few references to love between the sexes, however, are submerged beneath the more generic love of friends, without which our life is "like coke and ashes." Thoreau's lofty aspirations were, of necessity, often unfulfilled, as his letters and