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The Concept of Inspiration in Thoreau's Poetry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The great majority of Thoreau's poems bear in some way on the subject of inspiration: on the conditions of its induction, the description of its progression, the feeling and value of the vision it gives, or the lament for its absence. A study of inspiration in Thoreau's poetry throws new light on his poetic structures, themes, and image patterns, and perhaps offers ground for comment on why Thoreau dropped verse for prose almost entirely quite early in his writing career.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © 1964 by The Modern Language Association of America
References
1 The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward W. Emerson (Boston, 1903–04), viii, 271. Subsequently referred to as RWE.
2 The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, ed. H. E. Scudder (Boston, 1906), i, 401. Subsequently referred to as Writings.
3 Collected Poems of Henry Thoreau, ed. Carl Bode (Chicago, 1943), pp. 230, 231. Hereafter referred to as CP. Since all poems used in this paper are taken from this collection, quotations from poems the titles or first lines of which appear in the text will not be footnoted.
4 The Variorum Walden, ed. Walter Harding (New York, 1962), p. 139.
5 The Variorum Walden, p. 223. There is, of course, a pun on “concord.”
6 See The Journals of Henry David Thoreau, ed. Bradford Torrey (Boston, 1906). The Journals became vols, vii-xx of Writings and will be so cited in this paper. See Writings, xi, 444; xv, 289.
7 Writings, i, 329.
8 Writings, i, 365.
9 Cf. Emerson's careful list, in “Inspiration,” RWE, viii, 279–297, of the practices a poet may use to stimulate his inspiration.
10 Writings, vii, 73.
11 Writings, viii, 469.
12 Writings, viii, 341.
13 Cf. Emerson's “Two Rivers,” RWE, ix, 248.
14 See Sherman Paul, “The Wise Silence: Sound as the Agency of Correspondence in Thoreau,” NEQ, xxii (December 1949), 511–527.
15 Cf. “The Moon,” CP, p. 11.
16 The Variorum Walden, p. 260.
17 See also “I am the autumnal sun” and “Salmon Brook,” CP, pp. 80, 79.
18 Writings, i, 314.
19 “The Poet,” RWE, ix, 311.
20 Cf. Coleridge's “The Eolian Harp,” ll. 44–48; M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York, 1953), pp. 51, 52.
21 RWE, ix, 392.
22 Echoes of the image appear in C. P. Cranch's “Correspondences,” Dial, i (January 1841), 381; Ellery Channing's “Inscription for a Garden,” Poems (Boston, 1843), p. 76; and Emerson's “Bacchus,” RWE, ix, 125. Cf. Deuteronomy xxxii.2, 3.
23 “Th' ambrosia of the gods's a weed on earth,” CP, p. 174. Cf. “Tall Ambrosia,” p. 173; “Such water do the gods distil,” p. 44.
24 See RWE, i, 50, 51.
25 Writings, vii, 300, 301.
26 Cf. “Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy,” CP, p. 64, st. v; Writings, vii, 284.
27 “Forever in my dream & in my morning thought,” CP, p. 184.
28 Cf. “To the Mountains,” CP, p. 200, a poem in which mountains appear as solid representations of natural law, kind because of their dependable stillness.
29 “I do not fear my thoughts will die,” CP, p. 179.
30 See also “Rumors from an Aeolian Harp,” CP, p. 53; “Away! Away! Away! Away!” pp. 54, 55; “May Morning,” p. 97. Cf. Writings, vii, 473, 474; xix, 140, 141.
31 RWE, ix, 63.
32 P. 188.
33 Poems: Second Series (Boston, 1847), p. 77.
34 Dial, i (October 1840), 232.
35 Poems (Boston, 1843), p. 96.
36 See e.g., CP, pp. 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 137, 138, 140, 191.
37 Writings, i, 365.
38 Variorum Walden, p. 260.
39 “Thoreau,” Atlantic Monthly, x (August 1862), 246.