WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Henry David Thoreau

and redeemers had rather

      consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere

      recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life,

      any memorable praise of God. All health and success does me good,

      however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure

      helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may

      have with me or I with it. If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by

      truly Indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as

      simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over

      our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to

      be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies

      of the world.

      I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that

      “They asked a wise man, saying; Of the many celebrated trees which the

      Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or

      free, excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit; what mystery is

      there in this? He replied; Each has its appropriate produce, and

      appointed season, during the continuance of which it is fresh and

      blooming, and during their absence dry and withered; to neither of

      which states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and of

      this nature are the azads, or religious independents.—Fix not thy heart

      on that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue

      to flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy

      hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing

      to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress.”

      COMPLEMENTAL VERSES

      The Pretensions of Poverty

      “Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,

      To claim a station in the firmament

      Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,

      Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue

      In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,

      With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,

      Tearing those humane passions from the mind,

      Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,

      Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,

      And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.

      We not require the dull society

      Of your necessitated temperance,

      Or that unnatural stupidity

      That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc’d

      Falsely exalted passive fortitude

      Above the active. This low abject brood,

      That fix their seats in mediocrity,

      Become your servile minds; but we advance

      Such virtues only as admit excess,

      Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,

      All-seeing prudence, magnanimity

      That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue

      For which antiquity hath left no name,

      But patterns only, such as Hercules,

      Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath’d cell;

      And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,

      Study to know but what those worthies were.”

      T. CAREW