I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once moreonly the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,--those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.
Henry David ThoreauIce is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.
Henry David ThoreauNature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.
Henry David ThoreauThe poet's, commonly, is not a logger's path, but a woodman's. The logger and pioneer have preceded him, like John the Baptist; eaten the wild honey, it may be, but the locusts also; banished decaying wood and the spongy mosses which feed on it, and built hearths and humanized Nature for him.
Henry David ThoreauI lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once moreonly the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,--those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.
Henry David Thoreau