Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/464

374 We know not what is good.

Where does the fragrance of our orchards go,

Our vineyards, while we toil below?

A finer race and finer fed

Feast and revel above our head.

The tints and fragrance of the flowers and fruits

Are but the crumbs from off their table,

While we consume the pulp and roots.

Sometimes we do assert our kin,

And stand a moment where once they have been.

We hear their sounds and see their sights,

And we experience their delights.

But for the moment that we stand

Astonished on the Olympian land,

We do discern no traveller's face,

No elder brother of our race,

To lead us to the monarch's court

And represent our case;

But straightway we must journey back,

Retracing slow the arduous track,

Without the privilege to tell,

Even, the sight we know so well.

In my father's house are many mansions.

Who ever explored the mansions of the air? Who knows who his neighbors are? We seem to lead our human lives amid a concentric system of worlds, of realm on realm, close bordering on each other, where dwell the unknown and the imagined races, as various in degree as our own thoughts are, a system of