Two Poems by Henry David Thoreau

"My life has been the poem I would have writ, / But I could not both live and utter it." So wrote American essayist, poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau in his book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). On this day two hundred years ago in 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts. Here are two poems that he did write.


I WAS MADE ERECT AND LONE

I was made erect and lone,
And within me is the bone;
Still my vision will be clear,
Still my life will not be drear,
To the center all is near.
Where I sit there is my throne.
If age choose to sit apart,
If age choose, give me the start,
Take the sap and leave the heart.


MEN SAY THEY KNOW MANY THINGS

Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, --
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)