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Henry David Thoreau: Walden, The Maine Woods, Collected Essays & Poems (paperback)

Edited by Elizabeth Hall Witherell and Robert F. Sayre

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

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Here, in one volume for the first time, are the most important works of Henry David Thoreau, America’s greatest nature writer and a political thinker of worldwide influence.

A landmark in American literature, Walden is at once a personal declaration of independence, a social experiment, a manual of self-reliance, and a masterpiece of style. The Maine Woods combines close observation of the unexplored Maine wilderness with a far-sighted plea for conservation. Including “Civil Disobedience,” “Walking,” and “Life Without Principle,” the 27 essays gathered here reflect Thoreau’s speculative and probing cast of mind. In his poems, presented here in versions from his journals and manuscripts, Thoreau gave voice to his private sentiments and spiritual aspirations in the plain style of New England speech.
Table of Contents

Walden; or, Life in the Woods

The Maine Woods

Essays
Aulus Persius Flaccus
The Service
Natural History of Massachusetts
A Walk to Wachusett
Sir Walter Raleigh
Dark Ages
A Winter Walk
The Landlord
Paradise (To Be) Regained
Homer. Ossian. Chaucer.
Herald of Freedom
Wendell Phillips Before Concord Lyceum
Thomas Carlyle and His Works
Civil Disobedience
Walking
A Yankee in Canada
Love
Chastity & Sensuality
Slavery in Massachusetts
Life Without Principle
Autumnal Tints
A Plea for Captain John Brown
Martyrdom of John Brown
The Last Days of John Brown
The Succession of Forest Trees
Wild Apples
Huckleberries

Poems
In days of yore, tis said, the swimming alder
Fair Haven (“When little hills like lambs did skip”)
Voyagers Song
Life is a summer’s day
I love a careless streamlet
Pens to mend, and hands to guide
Each summer sound
Friendship (“I think awhile of Love, and while I think”)
When breathless noon hath paused on hill and vale
The Bluebirds
May Morning
Walden
Truth—Goodness—Beauty—those celestial thrins
Strange that so many fickle gods, as fickle as the weather
In the busy streets, domains of trade
I knew a man by sight
Cliffs
My Boots
Noon
Fair Haven (“When Winter fringes every bough”)
The Thaw
Last night as I lay gazing with shut eyes
Love
The deeds of king and meanest hedger
’T will soon appear if we but look
The Evening Wind
The Peal of the Bells
The Shrike
Sympathy
The “Book of Gems”
The Assabet
The Breeze’s Invitation
Stanzas
Loves Farewell
Each more melodious note I hear
The Fisher’s Son
Friendship (“Let such pure hate still underprop”)
The Freshet
The Poet’s Delay
The Summer Rain
Guido’s Aurora
I’ve heard my neighbor’s pump at night
Who sleeps by day and walks by night
When with pale cheek and sunken eye I sang
I arose before light
I’m guided in the darkest night
Friends—
When in some cove I lie
Who hears the parson
Sic Vita
Wait not till I invite thee, but observe
Friendship (“Now we are partners in such legal trade”)
On the Sun Coming Out in the Afternoon
They who prepare my evening meal below
My ground is high
If from your price ye will not swerve
Death cannot come too soon
The Mountains in the Horizon
The needles of the pine
The Echo of the Sabbath Bell—
Low in the eastern sky
My life has been the poem I would have writ
To the Mountains
Greater is the depth of sadness
Where I have been
Better wait
Independence
Cock-crowing
Inspiration (“Whate’er we leave to God, God does”)
The Soul’s Season
The Fall of the Leaf
Delay
Inspiration (“If thou wilt but stand by my ear”)
Ive searched my faculties around
Who equallest the coward’s haste
The Vireo
The coward ever sings no song
Only the slave knows of the slave
Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf
The Inward Morning
Within the circuit of this plodding life
To Edith
Delay in Friendship
Ah, ’tis in vain the peaceful din
Between the traveller and the setting sun
Have ye no work for a man to do—
I sailed up a river with a pleasant wind
I was made erect and lone
contents ix
I’m not alone
Our Country
Pray to what earth does this sweet cold belong
True kindness is a pure divine affinity
Until at length the north winds blow
Wait not till slaves pronounce the word
The Funeral Bell
Sometimes I hear the veery’s clarion
Thou dusky spirit of the wood
Not unconcerned Wachusett rears his head
Nature
Godfrey of Boulogne
The Rabbit leaps
I am the Autumnal sun
Where’er thou sail’st who sailed with me
I was born upon thy bank river
Salmon Brook
The moon now rises to her absolute rule
My friends, why should we live?
I mark the summer’s swift decline
My love must be as free
The Moon
Rumors From an Aeolian Harp
On shoulders whirled in some eccentric orbit
Far oer The bow
Methinks that by a strict behavior
I have rolled near some other spirits path
Fog
How little curious is man
To the Comet
Haze
Smoke
To a Stray Fowl
The Departure
Brother where dost thou dwell?
All things are current found
On fields oer which the reaper’s hand has passed
Epitaph on an Engraver
Epitaph on Pursy
Ep on a Good Man
Epitaph
Ep on the World
The sluggish smoke curls up from some deep dell
On Ponkawtasset, since, we took our way
To a Marsh Hawk in Spring
Great Friend
The offer
Morning
The Friend
Yet let us Thank the purblind race
Ye do command me to all virtue ever
Ive seen ye, sisters, on the mountain-side
I am bound, I am bound, for a distant shore
The Hero
At midnight’s hour I raised my head
I seek the Present Time
Tell me ye wise ones if ye can
Behold these flowers—
My friends, my noble friends, know ye—
The Earth
But now “no war nor battle’s sound”
Such water do the gods distill
Die and be buried who will
I have seen some frozenfaced connecticut
Such near aspects had we
Travelling
The Atlantides
Conscience is instinct bred in the house
That Phaeton of our day
Then spend an age in whetting thy desire
We see the planet fall
We should not mind if on our ear there fell
Men say they know many things
Away! away! away! away!
In the East fames are won
The good how can we trust?
Greece
Poverty
The respectable folks
Farewell
For though the eaves were rabitted
You Boston folks & Roxbury people
I will obey the strictest law of love
Why toll the bell today—
And once again
The Old Marlborough Road
Old meeting-house bell
It is a real place
Among the worst of men that ever lived
What’s the rail-road to me?
Tall Ambrosia
’Tis very fit the ambrosia of the gods
I saw a delicate flower had grown up 2 feet high
To day I climbed a handsome rounded hill
I am the little Irish boy
In Adams fall
Life
The moon moves up her smooth and sheeny path
I’m thankful that my life doth not deceive
Manhood
Music
The Just Made Perfect
I do not fear my thoughts will die
I’m contented you should stay
Man Man is the Devil
You must not only aim aright
He knows no change who knows the true
When the toads begin to ring
The chicadee
’Twas 30 years ago
Forever in my dream & in my morning thought
Except, returning, by the Marlboro
The Rosa Sanguinea
Any fool can make a rule
All things decay

Chronology
Note on the Texts
Notes
Index of Titles and First Lines

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