Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/394

304 nothing better in its kind. The poets seem to be only more frank and plain-spoken than other men. Their verse is but confessions. They always confide in the reader, and speak privily with him, keeping nothing back.

I know of no safe rule by which to judge of the purity of a former age but that I see that the impure of the present age are not apt to rise to noble sentiments when they speak or write, and suspect, therefore, that there may be more truth than is allowed in the apology that such was the manner of the age.

Within the circuit of this plodding life,

There are moments of an azure hue

And as unspotted fair as is the violet

Or anemone, when the spring strews them

By some south woodside; which make untrue

The best philosophy which has so poor an aim

But to console man for his grievance here.

I have remembered when the winter came,

High in my chamber in the frosty nights,

How in the summer past some

Unrecorded beam slanted across

Some upland pasture where the Johnswort grew,

Or heard, amidst the verdure of my mind, the bee's long-smothered hum,

So by the cheap economy of God made rich to go upon my wintry work again.

In the still, cheerful cold of winter nights,

When, in the cold light of the moon,