Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/499

1845-47 I seek the present time,

No other clime,

Life in to-day,—

Not to sail another way,—

To Paris or to Rome,

Or farther still from home.

That man, whoe'er he is,

Lives but a moral death

Whose life is not coeval

With his breath.

My feet forever stand

On Concord fields,

And I must live the life

Which their soil yields.

What are deeds done

Away from home?

What the best essay

On the Ruins of Rome?

The love of the new,

The unfathomed blue,

The wind in the wood,

All future good,

The sunlit tree,

The small chickadee,

The dusty highways,

What Scripture says,

This pleasant weather,

And all else together,

The river's meander,

All things, in short,

Forbid me to wander