Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/547

1837-47]

Gray sedulously cultivated poetry, but the plant would not thrive. His life seems to have needed some more sincere and ruder experience.

Occasionally we rowed near enough to a cottage to see the sunflowers before the door, and the seed-vessels of the poppy, like small goblets filled with the waters of Lethe, but without disturbing the sluggish household.

Driving the small sandpiper before us.

Thou drifting meadow of the air,

Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,