THE GRAVE OF THOREAU

Brown earth, blue sky, and solitude,—

Three things he loved, three things he wooed

Lifelong; and now no rhyme can tell

How ultimately all is well

With his wild heart that worshipped God's

Epiphany in crumbling sods

And like an oak brought all its worth

Back to the kindly mother earth.

But something starry, something bold,

Eludes the clutch of dark and mould,—

Something that will not wholly die

Out of the old familiar sky.

No spell in all the lore of graves

Can still the plash of Walden waves

Or wash away the azure stain

Of Concord skies from heart and brain.

Clear psalteries and faint citoles

Only recall the orioles

Fluting reveille to the morn

Across the acres of the corn

He wanders somewhere lonely still

Along a solitary hill

And sits by ever lonelier fires

Remote from heaven's bright rampires,

A hermit in the blue Beyond

Beside some dim celestial pond

With beans to hoe and wood to hew

And halcyon days to loiter through

And angel visitors, no doubt,

Who shut the air and sunlight out.

But he who scoffed at human ways

And, finding us unworthy of praise,

Sang misanthropic paeans to

The muskrat and the feverfew,

Will droop those archangelic wings

With praise of how we manage things,

Prefer his Walden tupelo

To even the Tree of Life, and grow

A little wistful looking down

Across the fields of Concord town.