The writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau was born 200 years ago on July 12, 1817.
Ralph Waldo Emerson remembered him thus:
His poetry might be bad or good; he no doubt wanted a lyric facility and technical skill; but he had the source of poetry in his spiritual perception. He was a good reader and critic, and his judgment on poetry was to the ground of it. He could not be deceived as to the presence or absence of the poetic element in any composition, and his thirst for this made him negligent and perhaps scornful of superficial graces. … He was so enamored of the spiritual beauty that he held all actual written poems in very light esteem in the comparison. …
Such was the wealth of his truth that it was not worth his while to use words in vain. … His biography is in his verses. His habitual thought makes all his poetry a hymn to the Cause of causes, the Spirit which vivifies and controls his own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson remembered him thus:
His poetry might be bad or good; he no doubt wanted a lyric facility and technical skill; but he had the source of poetry in his spiritual perception. He was a good reader and critic, and his judgment on poetry was to the ground of it. He could not be deceived as to the presence or absence of the poetic element in any composition, and his thirst for this made him negligent and perhaps scornful of superficial graces. … He was so enamored of the spiritual beauty that he held all actual written poems in very light esteem in the comparison. …
Such was the wealth of his truth that it was not worth his while to use words in vain. … His biography is in his verses. His habitual thought makes all his poetry a hymn to the Cause of causes, the Spirit which vivifies and controls his own.
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