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Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead.
As, on the jag of a mountain crag

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle, alit, one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings;

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardors of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor
By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch, through which I march,
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-colored bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain, when, with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air,—

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I rise and upbuild it again.

BRUTE NEIGHBORS

By HENRY DAVID THOREAU

NOTE. The author of this sketch, Henry David Thoreau, who lived from 1817 to 1862, was one of the oddest of American men of genius. He was educated at Harvard University, but he did not care, in the common phrase, to "turn his learning to practical account;" that is, save for a short time when he taught school, he did not make it earn his living for him. His theory was that life and energy were being wasted when a man spent in working more time than he absolutely needed to in order to provide himself with necessities; and this theory he carried out in his own life. While he lived in Concord, he did odd jobs at carpentering, surveying, and gardening, and worked for a time at his father's trade of pencil making. However, he contended that a man was doing himself an injustice if he kept on at that work after he had reached the point where he could make no further improvement in his pencils.

From 1845 to 1847 Thoreau lived as a hermit in a hut which he had built on the shore of Walden Pond, and the simple life he led there gave him plenty of leisure for the things he liked best-the study of nature, the grappling with philosophical problems, and the society of friends. The result of the two years at Walden Pond was his best book, Walden, or Life in the Woods, a work which is distinguished for its peculiarly truthful and sympathetic studies of nature.

Thoreau refused to perform any of the ordinary duties of a citizen; he never voted, he never paid taxes. Once he was arrested because he refused to pay his taxes, and was thrown into jail; his friends remonstrated with him, but still he refused to pay. However, when his friends paid the sum he made no objections to accepting his release, nor

did he in the future make any objections when his friends quietly paid his taxes.

The Pond in Winter and Winter Animals, which are contained in this volume, are also from Thoreau.

W

HY do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have put animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts.

The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bo-peep with it; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and

finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.

A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge (Tetrao umbellus), which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother's directions given from a distance, nor will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. I have held them in my open hand at such a time, and still their only care, obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the

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