Perhaps no one in English history better represents the heroic character than Sir Walter Raleigh, for Sidney has got to be almost as shadowy as Arthur himself. Raleigh’s somewhat antiqu...

Here lies the body of this world, Whose soul alas to hell is hurled. This golden youth long since was p… Its silver manhood went as fast, An iron age drew on at last;

Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings,— The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that blows

Every man is entitled to come to cattle-show, even a transcendentalist; and for my part I am more interested in the men than in the cattle. I wish to see once more those old familiar fa...

Under the one word, house, are included the schoolhouse, the alms-house, the jail, the tavern, the dwelling-house; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains the elements o...

A true poem is distinguished, not so much by a felicitous expression or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most have beauty of outline merely, and are str...

IN vain I see the morning rise, In vain observe the western blaze, Who idly look to other skies, Expecting life by other ways. Amidst such boundless wealth witho…

After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what—how—when—where? But the...

The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But...

What a contrast between the stern and desolate poetry of Ossian, and that of Chaucer, and even of Shakespeare and Milton, much more of Dryden, and Pope, and Gray. Our summer of English ...

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in...

I trust that you will pardon me for being here. I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to corr...

Among the signs of autumn I perce… The Roman wormwood (called by lea… Ambrosia elatior, food for gods,— For to impartial science the humbl… Is as immortal once as the proudes…

O Nature! I do not aspire To be the highest in thy choir, - To be a meteor in thy sky, Or comet that may range on high; Only a zephyr that may blow