The Essential Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated Collection of the Thoreau's Greatest Works). Генри Дэвид Торо

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СКАЧАТЬ the victor, whom all Pindars praised, has won another palm, contending with

      "Olympian bards who sung

       Divine ideas below,

       Which always find us young,

       And always keep us so."

      What earth or sea, mountain or stream, or Muses' spring or grove, is safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives off Phoebus' beaten track, visits unwonted zones, makes the gelid Hyperboreans glow, and the old polar serpent writhe, and many a Nile flow back and hide his head!

      That Phaeton of our day,

       Who'd make another milky way,

       And burn the world up with his ray;

      By us an undisputed seer,—

       Who'd drive his flaming car so near

       Unto our shuddering mortal sphere,

      Disgracing all our slender worth,

       And scorching up the living earth,

       To prove his heavenly birth.

      The silver spokes, the golden tire,

       Are glowing with unwonted fire,

       And ever nigher roll and nigher;

      The pins and axle melted are,

       The silver radii fly afar,

       Ah, he will spoil his Father's car!

      Who let him have the steeds he cannot steer?

       Henceforth the sun will not shine for a year;

       And we shall Ethiops all appear.

      From his

      "lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle."

      And yet, sometimes,

      We should not mind if on our ear there fell

       Some less of cunning, more of oracle.

      It is Apollo shining in your face. O rare Contemporary, let us have far-off heats. Give us the subtler, the heavenlier though fleeting beauty, which passes through and through, and dwells not in the verse; even pure water, which but reflects those tints which wine wears in its grain. Let epic trade-winds blow, and cease this waltz of inspirations. Let us oftener feel even the gentle southwest wind upon our cheeks blowing from the Indian's heaven. What though we lose a thousand meteors from the sky, if skyey depths, if star-dust and undissolvable nebulae remain? What though we lose a thousand wise responses of the oracle, if we may have instead some natural acres of Ionian earth?

      Though we know well,

      "That 't is not in the power of kings (or presidents) to raise

       A spirit for verse that is not born thereto,

       Nor are they born in every prince's days";

      yet spite of all they sang in praise of their "Eliza's reign," we have evidence that poets may be born and sing in our day, in the presidency of James K. Polk,

      "And that the utmost powers of English rhyme,"

       Were not "within her peaceful reign confined."

      The prophecy of the poet Daniel is already how much more than fulfilled!

      "And who in time knows whither we may vent

       The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores

       This gain of our best glory shall be sent,

       T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores?

       What worlds in th' yet unformed occident,

       May come refined with the accents that are ours."

      Enough has been said in these days of the charm of fluent writing. We hear it complained of some works of genius, that they have fine thoughts, but are irregular and have no flow. But even the mountain peaks in the horizon are, to the eye of science, parts of one range. We should consider that the flow of thought is more like a tidal wave than a prone river, and is the result of a celestial influence, not of any declivity in its channel. The river flows because it runs down hill, and flows the faster the faster it descends. The reader who expects to float down stream for the whole voyage, may well complain of nauseating swells and choppings of the sea when his frail shore-craft gets amidst the billows of the ocean stream, which flows as much to sun and moon as lesser streams to it. But if we would appreciate the flow that is in these books, we must expect to feel it rise from the page like an exhalation, and wash away our critical brains like burr millstones, flowing to higher levels above and behind ourselves. There is many a book which ripples on like a freshet, and flows as glibly as a mill-stream sucking under a causeway; and when their authors are in the full tide of their discourse, Pythagoras and Plato and Jamblichus halt beside them. Their long, stringy, slimy sentences are of that consistency that they naturally flow and run together. They read as if written for military men, for men of business, there is such a despatch in them. Compared with these, the grave thinkers and philosophers seem not to have got their swaddling-clothes off; they are slower than a Roman army in its march, the rear camping to-night where the van camped last night. The wise Jamblichus eddies and gleams like a watery slough.

      "How many thousands never heard the name

       Of Sidney, or of Spenser, or their books?

       And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame,

       And seem to bear down all the world with looks."

      The ready writer seizes the pen, and shouts, Forward! Alamo and Fanning! and after rolls the tide of war. The very walls and fences seem to travel. But the most rapid trot is no flow after all; and thither, reader, you and I, at least, will not follow.

      A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively, as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might well be studied if only for the excellence of his style, for he is remarkable in the midst of so many masters. There is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man's tread, and a breathing space between the sentences, which the best of modern writing does not furnish. His chapters are like English parks, or say rather like a Western forest, where the larger growth keeps down the underwood, and one may ride on horseback through the openings. All the distinguished writers of that period possess a greater vigor and naturalness than the more modern,—for it is allowed to slander our own time,—and when we read a quotation from one of them in the midst of a modern author, we seem to have come suddenly upon a greener ground, a greater depth and strength of soil. It is as if a green bough were laid across the page, and we are refreshed as by the sight of fresh grass in midwinter or early spring. You have constantly the warrant of life and experience in what you read. The little that is said is eked out by implication of the much that was done. The sentences are verdurous and blooming as evergreen and flowers, because they are rooted СКАЧАТЬ