Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/568

478 Accept my hospitality; let me hear

The message which thou bring'st.

Made different from me,

Perchance thou 'rt made to be

The creature of a different destiny.

I know not who ye are that meekly stand

Thus side by side with man in every land.

When did ye form alliance with our race,

Ye children of the moon, who in mild nights

Vaulted upon the hills and sought this earth?

Reveal that which I fear ye cannot tell,

Wherein ye are not I, wherein ye dwell

Where I can never come.

What boots it that I do regard ye so?

Does it make suns to shine or crops to grow?

What boots [it] that I never should forget

That I have sisters sitting for me yet?

And what are sisters?

The robust man, who can so stoutly strive,

In this bleak world is hardly kept alive.

And who is it protects ye, smooths your way?

We can afford to lend a willing ear occasionally to those earnest reformers of the age. Let us treat them hospitably. Shall we be charitable only to the poor? What though they are fanatics? Their errors are likely to be generous errors, and these may be they who will put to rest the American Church and the American government, and awaken better ones in their stead.

Let us not meanly seek to maintain our delicate lives in chambers or in legislative halls by a timid