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Description

Walden is one of the more famous transcendentalist tracts in modern American literature. First published in 1854, Walden is an account of Thoreau’s famous experiment in solitude: spending over two years alone in a cabin near the wilderness.

Walden is broken into sections that meditate on single themes: economy, reading, sounds, solitude, visitors, and so on. The style is complex, weaving back and forth between simple, home-spun prose and complex allegory, metaphor, and allusion. This makes Walden an interesting read because while it may seem accessible on the surface, it’s a book that requires deep and repeated reading to fully appreciate its many complexities.

clothes on a rock; further, a woman's scarf, a gown, a straw bonnet, the brig's caboose, and one of her masts high and dry, broken into several pieces. In another rocky cove, several rods from the water, and behind rocks twenty feet high, lay a part of one side of the vessel, still hanging together. It was, perhaps, forty feet long, by fourteen wide. I was even more surprised at the power of the waves, exhibited on this shattered fragment, than I had been at the sight of the smaller fragments before. The largest timbers and iron braces were broken superfluously, and I saw that no material could withstand the power of the waves; that iron must go to pieces in such a case, and an iron vessel would be cracked up like an egg-shell on the rocks. Some of these timbers, however, were so rotten that I could almost thrust my umbrella through them. They told us that some were saved on this piece, and also showed where the sea had heaved it into this cove, which was now dry. When I saw where it had come in, and in what

he Choice ofParis and The Apples of the Hesperides.]

The tree is mentioned in at least three places in the Old Testament,and its fruit in two or three more. Solomon sings, "As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons."And again, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples." Thenoblest part of man's noblest feature is named from this fruit, "theapple of the eye."

The apple-tree is also mentioned by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses sawin the glorious garden of Alcinous "pears and pomegranates andapple-trees bearing beautiful fruit." And according to Homer, appleswere among the fruits which Tantalus could not pluck, the wind everblowing their boughs away from him. Theophrastus knew and describedthe apple-tree as a botanist.

According to the prose Edda, [Footnote: The stories of the earlyScandinavians.] "Iduna keeps in a box the apples which the gods,when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to becomeyoung again. It is in this manner that the

ttering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an airing-and so the evil cure itself.

How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not STAND it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch over the slumberers.

No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening of life approaches, till a

of the slaves, or to march to Mexico--see if I would go"; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly

, if not before. It is said thatDeucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their headsbehind them:--

Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,

Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.

Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,--

"From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are."

So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing thestones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mereignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares andsuperfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot beplucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsyand tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has notleisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustainthe manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in thema

Description

Walden is one of the more famous transcendentalist tracts in modern American literature. First published in 1854, Walden is an account of Thoreau’s famous experiment in solitude: spending over two years alone in a cabin near the wilderness.

Walden is broken into sections that meditate on single themes: economy, reading, sounds, solitude, visitors, and so on. The style is complex, weaving back and forth between simple, home-spun prose and complex allegory, metaphor, and allusion. This makes Walden an interesting read because while it may seem accessible on the surface, it’s a book that requires deep and repeated reading to fully appreciate its many complexities.

clothes on a rock; further, a woman's scarf, a gown, a straw bonnet, the brig's caboose, and one of her masts high and dry, broken into several pieces. In another rocky cove, several rods from the water, and behind rocks twenty feet high, lay a part of one side of the vessel, still hanging together. It was, perhaps, forty feet long, by fourteen wide. I was even more surprised at the power of the waves, exhibited on this shattered fragment, than I had been at the sight of the smaller fragments before. The largest timbers and iron braces were broken superfluously, and I saw that no material could withstand the power of the waves; that iron must go to pieces in such a case, and an iron vessel would be cracked up like an egg-shell on the rocks. Some of these timbers, however, were so rotten that I could almost thrust my umbrella through them. They told us that some were saved on this piece, and also showed where the sea had heaved it into this cove, which was now dry. When I saw where it had come in, and in what

he Choice ofParis and The Apples of the Hesperides.]

The tree is mentioned in at least three places in the Old Testament,and its fruit in two or three more. Solomon sings, "As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons."And again, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples." Thenoblest part of man's noblest feature is named from this fruit, "theapple of the eye."

The apple-tree is also mentioned by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses sawin the glorious garden of Alcinous "pears and pomegranates andapple-trees bearing beautiful fruit." And according to Homer, appleswere among the fruits which Tantalus could not pluck, the wind everblowing their boughs away from him. Theophrastus knew and describedthe apple-tree as a botanist.

According to the prose Edda, [Footnote: The stories of the earlyScandinavians.] "Iduna keeps in a box the apples which the gods,when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to becomeyoung again. It is in this manner that the

ttering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an airing-and so the evil cure itself.

How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not STAND it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch over the slumberers.

No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening of life approaches, till a

of the slaves, or to march to Mexico--see if I would go"; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly

, if not before. It is said thatDeucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their headsbehind them:--

Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,

Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.

Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,--

"From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are."

So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing thestones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mereignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares andsuperfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot beplucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsyand tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has notleisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustainthe manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in thema