Complete Prose Works
before have I been so penetrated by this kind of expression. I stood
long and long before "the Sower." I believe what the picture-men
designate "the first Sower," as the artist executed a second copy, and
a third, and, some think, improved in each. But I doubt it. There is
something in this that could hardly be caught again--a sublime murkiness
and original pent fury. Besides this masterpiece, there were many
others, (I shall never forget the simple evening scene, "Watering the
Cow,") all inimitable, all perfect as pictures, works of mere art; and
then it seem'd to me, with that last impalpable ethic purpose from the
artist (most likely unconscious to himself) which I am always looking
for. To me all of them told the full story of what went before and
necessitated the great French revolution--the long precedent crushing
of the masses of a heroic people into the earth, in abject poverty,
hunger--every right denied, humanity attempted to be put back for
generations--yet Nature's force, titanic here, the stronger and hardier
for that repression--waiting terribly to break forth, revengeful--the
pressure on the dykes, and the bursting at last--the storming of the
Bastile--the execution of the king and queen--the tempest of massacres
and blood. Yet who can wonder?
Could we wish humanity different?
Could we wish the people made of wood or stone?
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
The true France, base of all the rest, is certainly in these pictures. I
comprehend "Field-People Reposing," "the Diggers," and "the Angelus"
in this opinion. Some folks always think of the French as a small race,
five or five and a half feet high, and ever frivolous and smirking.
Nothing of the sort. The bulk of the personnel of France, before the
revolution, was large-sized, serious, industrious as now, and simple.
The revolution and Napoleon's wars dwarf'd the standard of human size,
but it will come up again. If for nothing else, I should dwell on my
brief Boston visit for opening to me the new world of Millet's pictures.
Will America ever have such an artist out of her own gestation, body,
soul?
_Sunday, April 17._--An hour and a half, late this afternoon, in silence
and half light, in the great nave of Memorial hall, Cambridge, the walls
thickly cover'd with mural tablets, bearing the names of students and
graduates of the university who fell in the secession war.
_April 23._--It was well I got away in fair order, for if I had staid
another week I should have been killed with kindness, and with eating
and drinking.
BIRDS--AND A CAUTION
_May 14._--Home again; down temporarily in the Jersey woods. Between 8
and 9 A.M. a full concert of birds, from different quarters, in keeping
with the fresh scent, the peace, the naturalness all around me. I am
lately noticing the russet-back, size of the robin or a trifle less,
light breast and shoulders, with irregular dark stripes--tail long--sits
hunch'd up by the hour these days, top of a tall bush, or some tree,
singing blithely. I often get near and listen, as he seems tame; I like
to watch the working of his bill and throat, the quaint sidle of his
body, and flex of his long tail. I hear the woodpecker, and night and
early morning the shuttle of the whip-poor-will--noons, the gurgle of
thrush delicious, and _meo-o-ow_ of the cat-bird. Many I cannot name;
but I do not very particularly seek information. (You must not know too
much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers
and water-craft; a certain free margin, and even vagueness--perhaps
ignorance, credulity--helps your enjoyment of these things, and of the
sentiment of feather'd, wooded, river, or marine Nature generally. I
repeat it--don't want to know too exactly, or the reasons why. My own
notes have been written off-hand in the latitude of middle New Jersey.
Though they describe what I saw--what appear'd to me--I dare say the
expert ornithologist, botanist or entomologist will detect more than one
slip in them.)
SAMPLES OF MY COMMON-PLACE BOOK
I ought not to offer a record of these days, interests, recuperations,
without including a certain old, well-thumb'd common-place book,[18]
filled with favorite excerpts, I carried in my pocket for three summers,
and absorb'd over and over again, when the mood invited. I find so much
in having a poem or fine suggestion sink into me (a little then goes a
great ways) prepar'd by these vacant-sane and natural influences.
Note:
[18] _Samples of my common-place book down at the creek:_
I have--says old Pindar--many swift arrows in my quiver which speak to
the wise, though they need an interpreter to the thoughtless. Such a man
as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand. _H. D. Thoreau._
If you hate a man, don't kill him, but let him live.--_Buddhistic._
Famous swords are made of refuse scraps, thought worthless.
Poetry is the only verity--the expression of a sound mind speaking after
the ideal--and not after the apparent.--_Emerson_.
The form of oath among the Shoshone Indians is, "The earth hears me. The
sun hears me. Shall I lie?"
The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of
cities, nor the crops--no, but the kind of a man the country turns
out.--_Emerson_.
The whole wide ether is the eagle's sway:
The whole earth is a brave man's fatherland.--_Euripides_.
Spices crush'd, their pungence yield,
Trodden scents their sweets respire;
Would you have its strength reveal'd?
Cast the incense in the fire.
Matthew Arnold speaks of "the huge Mississippi of falsehood called
History."
The wind blows north, the wind blows south,
The wind blows east and west;
No matter how the free wind blows,
Some ship will find it best.
Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, and
be silent.--_Epictetus_.
Victor Hugo makes a donkey meditate and apostrophize thus:
My brother, man, if you would know the truth,
We both are by the same dull walls shut in;
The gate is massive and the dungeon strong.
But you look through the key-hole out beyond,
And call this knowledge; yet have not at hand
The key wherein to turn the fatal lock.
"William Cullen Bryant surprised me once," relates a writer in a
New York paper, "by saying that prose was the natural language of
composition, and he wonder'd how anybody came to write poetry."
Farewell! I did not know thy worth;
But thou art gone, and now 'tis prized:
So angels walk'd unknown on earth,
But when they flew were recognized.--_Hood_.
John Burroughs, writing of Thoreau, says: "He improves with age--in fact
requires age to take off a little of his asperity, and fully ripen him.
The world likes a good hater and refuser almost as well as it likes a
good lover and accepter--only it likes him farther off."
_Louise Michel at the burial of Blanqui, (1881.)_
Blanqui drill'd his body to subjection to his grand conscience and his
noble passions, and commencing as a young man, broke with all that is
sybaritish in modern civilization. Without the power to sacrifice self,
great ideas will never bear fruit.
Out of the leaping furnace flame
A mass of molten silver came;
Then, beaten into pieces three,
Went forth to meet its destiny.
The first a crucifix was made,
Within a soldier's knapsack laid;
The second was a locket fair,
Where a mother kept her dead child's hair;
The third--a bangle, bright and warm,
Around a faithless woman's arm.
A mighty pain to love it is,
And'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pain the greatest pain,
It is to love, but love in vain.
_Maurice F. Egan on De Guerin._
A pagan heart, a Christian soul had he,
He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sigh'd,
Till earth and heaven met within his breast:
As if Theocritus in Sicily
Had come upon the Figure crucified,
And lost his gods in deep, Christ-given rest.
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me,
Is, leave the mind that now I bear,
And give me Liberty.--_Emily Bronte._
I travel on not knowing,
I would not if I might;
I would rather walk with God in the dark,
Than go alone in the light;
I would rather walk with Him by faith
Than pick my way by sight
MY NATIVE SAND AND SALT ONCE MORE
_July 25, '81.--Far Rockaway, L. I._--A good day here, on a jaunt,
amid the sand and salt, a steady breeze setting in from the sea, the sun
shining, the sedge-odor, the noise of the surf, a mixture of hissing and
booming, the milk-white crest curling. I had a leisurely bath and naked
ramble as of old, on the warm-gray shore-sands, my companions off in a
oat in deeper water--(I shouting to them Jupiter's menaces against the
gods, from Pope's Homer) _July 28--to Long Branch_--8-1/2 A.M., on the
steamer "Plymouth Rock," foot of 23d street, New York, for Long
Branch. Another fine day, fine sights, the shores, the shipping and
bay--everything comforting to the body and spirit of me. (I find the
human and objective atmosphere of New York city and Brooklyn more
affiliative to me than any other.) _An hour later_--Still on the
steamer, now sniffing the salt very plainly--the long pulsating _swash_
as our boat steams seaward--the hills of Navesink and many passing
vessels--the air the best part of all. At Long Branch the bulk of the
day, stopt at a good hotel, took all very leisurely, had an excellent
dinner, and then drove for over two hours about the place, especially
Ocean avenue, the finest drive one can imagine, seven or eight miles
right along the beach. In all directions costly villas, palaces,
millionaires--(but few among them I opine like my friend George W.
Childs, whose personal integrity, generosity, unaffected simplicity, go
beyond all worldly wealth.)
HOT WEATHER NEW YORK
_August_.--In the big city awhile. Even the height of the dog-days,
there is a good deal of fun about New York, if you only avoid fluster,
and take all the buoyant wholesomeness that offers. More comfort, too,
than most folks think. A middle-aged man, with plenty of money in his
pocket, tells me that he has been off for a month to all the swell
places, has disburs'd a small fortune, has been hot and out of kilter
everywhere, and has return' d home and lived in New York city the last
two weeks quite contented and happy. People forget when it is hot here,
it is generally hotter still in other places.
New York is so situated, with the great ozonic brine on both sides, it
comprises the most favorable health-chances in the world. (If only the
suffocating crowding of some of its tenement houses could be broken
up.) I find I never sufficiently realized how beautiful are the upper
two-thirds of Manhattan island. I am stopping at Mott Haven, and have
been familiar now for ten days with the region above One-hundredth
street, and along the Harlem river and Washington heights. Am dwelling a
few days with my friends Mr. and Mrs. J. H. J., and a merry houseful of
young ladies. Am putting the last touches on the printer's copy of my
new volume of "Leaves of Grass"--the completed book at last. Work at it
two or three hours, and then go down and loaf along the Harlem river;
have just had a good spell of this recreation. The sun sufficiently
veil'd, a soft south breeze, the river full of small or large shells
(light taper boats) darting up and down, some singly, now and then
long ones with six or eight young fellows practicing--very inspiriting
sights. Two fine yachts lie anchor'd off the shore. I linger long,
enjoying the sundown, the glow, the streak'd sky, the heights,