A Pretty Sonnet

in its clear surface the face of heaven. But I can only wish it. I still continue sanguine, ardent, and inconstant.

66

The other day, I handed to a lady a sonnet of Southey's, which had wrung tears from me. "It is pretty," said she, with a smile. "Pretty!" echoed I, as I looked at her; Pretty!" I went home. As I grew composed, I could not help reflecting that the lady who had made this answer was universally esteemed for her benevolence. I knew that she was goodness itself. But still she wanted feeling. "And what is feeling?" said I to myself. I blushed when I thought more on the subject. I found that the mind was just as passive in that state which I called "feeling,” as when it received any impressions of sense. One consequence immediately struck me, that there was no moral merit in possessing feeling. Of course there can be no crime in wanting it. "Well," continued I, "I have just been treating with contempt a woman of active benevolence, for not possessing what I must own it is no crime to want. Is this just?" I then went on to consider, whether there were not many persons who possessed this boasted feeling, but who were still deficient in active benevolence. A thousand instances occurred to me. I found myself among the number. "It is true," said I, "that I sit in my study and shed tears over human misery. I weep over a novel. I weep over a tale of human woe. But do I ever relieve the distressed? Have I ever lightened the load of affliction?" My cheeks reddened at the question; a cloud of error burst from my mind. I found, that virtue did not consist in feeling, but in acting from a sense of duty. . . .

Henry D. Thoreau advocates Work · Work · Work

MR.

CONCORD, December 19, 1853

R. BLAKE, — My debt has accumulated so that I should have answered your last letter at once, if I had not been the subject of what is called a press of engagements, having a lecture to write for last Wednesday, and surveying more than usual besides. It has been a kind of running fight with me, — the enemy not always behind me I trust.

True, a man cannot lift himself by his own waistbands, because he cannot get out of himself; but he can expand himself (which is better, there being no up nor down in nature), and so split his waistbands, being already within himself.

You speak of doing and being, and the vanity, real or apparent, of much doing. The suckers - I think it is they - make nests in our river in the spring of more than a cart-load of small stones, amid which to deposit their ova. The other day I opened a muskrat's house. It was made of weeds, five feet broad at base, and three feet high, and far and low within it was a little cavity, only a foot in diameter, where the rat dwelt. It may seem trivial, this piling up of weeds, but so the race of muskrats is preserved. We must heap up a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being. Is it not imperative on us that we do something, if we only work in a treadmill? And, indeed, some sort of revolving is necessary to produce a centre and nucleus of being. What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals. Consider what an amount of drudgery must be performed - how much humdrum and prosaic labor goes to any work of the least value. There are so many layers of mere white lime in every shell to that thin inner one so beautifully tinted.

The Discipline of Work

Let not the shellfish think to build his house of that alone; and pray, what are its tints to him? Is it not his smooth, close-fitting shirt merely, whose tints are not to him, being in the dark, but only when he is gone or dead, and his shell is heaved up to light, a wreck upon the beach, do they appear. With him, too, it is a Song of the Shirt, "Work, work, work!" And the work is not merely a police in the gross sense, but in the higher sense a discipline. If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

How admirably the artist is made to accomplish his self-culture by devotion to his art! The wood-sawyer, through his effort to do his work well, becomes not merely a better wood-sawyer, but measurably a better man. Few are the men that can work on their navels, only some Brahmins that I have heard of. To the painter is given some paint and canvas instead; to the Irishman a hog, typical of himself. In a thousand apparently humble ways men busy themselves to make some right take the place of some wrong, — if it is only to make a better paste blacking, - and they are themselves so much the better morally for it.

You say that you do not succeed much. Does it concern you enough that you do not? Do you work hard enough at it? Do you get the benefit of discipline out of it? If so, persevere. Is it a more serious thing than to

walk a thousand miles in a thousand successive hours ? Do you get any corns by it? Do you ever think of hanging yourself on account of failure?

If you are going into that line, — going to besiege the city of God, you must not only be strong in engines, but prepared with provisions to starve out the garrison. An

Irishman came to see me to-day, who is endeavoring his family out to this New World. He rises at hal four, milks twenty-eight cows (which has swollen the of his fingers), and eats his breakfast, without any m his tea or coffee, before six; and so on, day after da six and a half dollars a month; and thus he keep virtue in him, if he does not add to it; and he regard as a gentleman able to assist him; but if I ever get a gentleman, it will be by working after my fashion h than he does. If my joints are not swollen, it mu because I deal with the teats of celestial cows b breakfast (and the milker in this case is always all some of the milk for his breakfast), to say nothing of flocks and herds of Admetus afterward.

It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and e one who works is scrubbing in some part.

If the work is high and far,

You must not only aim aright,

But draw the bow with all your might.

You must qualify yourself to use a bow which no hum archer can bend.

Who shall know it for a bow? It is not of yew tree. straighter than a ray of light; flexibility is not known one of its qualities.

December 2

So far I had got when I was called off to survey. Those Brahmins "put it through." They come off, rather stand still, conquerors, with some withered arms legs at least to show; and they are said to have cultivat the faculty of abstraction to a degree unknown to Eu peans. If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we w

Go Ahead

are day owls, and there are night owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.

Might you not find some positive work to do with your back to Church and State, letting your back do all the rejection of them? Can you not go upon your pilgrimage, Peter, along the winding mountain path whither you face? A step more will make those funeral church bells over your shoulder sound far and sweet as a natural sound.

Why not make a very large mud pie and bake it in the sun! Only put no Church nor State into it, nor upset any other pepper-box that way. Dig out a woodchuck, —- for that has nothing to do with rotting institutions.

You said that you were writing on Immortality.

Go

I wish you would communicate to me what you know about that. You are sure to live while that is your theme.

Thus I write on some text which a sentence of your letters may have furnished.

I think of coming to see you as soon as I get a new coat, if I have money enough left. I will write to you again about it.

Erreur bien douloureuse

(Edwin Lawrence Godkin to Miss Tuckerman)

Y DEAR EMILY: :

MY

NEW YORK, Oct. 13, 1897

I have sent the extract for publication, and it will appear on Saturday. But I hesitate to promise a bloodcurdling editorial so soon.

I wish, I must confess that you were more interested in men and less in trees. As far as I can see, the great interests of civilization in this country are being left pretty