Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/350

314 was marked by bursts of matchless melody, so the pages of Thoreau, in journal or finished essay, abound in passages of rare prose-poetry. Listen again to this poet's swan-song, in “Walking,” “So we saunter towards the Holy Land, till one day when the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank side in autumn.”

In his later years of more strenuous thought the poetic fancies became submerged, or, more truly, assimilated. They were never expelled. One of the last acts of his life was the destruction of several poems, written at varied periods,—an irreparable loss to biography and literature. With truth, Emerson said, “Thoreau's best biography is in his poems.” Perhaps, he realized the unveiled light which these would cast upon certain repressed experiences of heart and soul, treasured memories to him but too sacred to be paraded before a curious public. If Thoreau's poems are marred by indirectness and excess of philosophic trend, there are occasional stanzas of freedom and beauty. Love of music, whether heard in nature's tones or in the artificial strains of a music-box, was a lifelong trait of Thoreau. It was to him a means of religion, of