Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/367

Rh in the dazzling halls of Aurora, into which poets have had but a partial glance over the eastern hills, drifting amid the saffron-colored clouds, and playing with the rosy fingers of the Dawn, in the very path of the Sun's chariot, and sprinkled with its dewy dust, enjoying the benignant smile, and near at hand the far-darting glances of the god." The economist urges simplification of life in details of food and clothing, but he hearkens, in the same moment, to the bobolink's song,—"It is as if he touched his harp within a vase of liquid melody, and when he lifted it out the notes fell like bubbles from the trembling strings." The variety of themes, often linked by a closer bond than many casual readers perceive, gives to Thoreau's style a diversity as marked as that of his interests. He is always cogent and forceful, whether describing lumber or bird-notes. His paradoxes and symbolism do not detract from his "nutty sentences." He was sometimes careless as to graceful finish, but he never failed to emphasize the vital thought. He scorned sentences that "contain as much flowerliness and dainty conceits as a milliner's window," yet he was master, on occasion, of exquisite diction and pictorial illustration. He commended the vigor of the Bible, Homer, Pliny, Milton, and Raleigh. At times,