Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/111

1838] much let a man do: confidently and heartily live up to his thought; for its error, if there be any, will soonest appear in practice, and if there be none, so much he may reckon as actual progress in the way of living.

The poet does not leap, even in imagination, from Asia to Greece through mid-air, neglectful of the fair sea and still fairer land beneath him, but jogs on humanly observant over the intervening segment of a sphere,—

March 5. How often, when Achilles like one whether to retaliate or suppress his wrath, has his good Genius, like Pallas Athene, gliding down from heaven,, stood behind him, and whispered peace in his ear!

Men may dispute about the fact whether a goddess did actually come down from heaven, calling it a poet's fancy, but was it not, considering the stuff that gods are made of, a very truth?