VOLUME V

Manuscript Edition Limited to Six Hundred Copies Number ----

The Writings of Henry David Thoreau

EXCURSIONS AND POEMS

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin and Company MDCCCCVI

Copyright 1865 and 1866 by Ticknor and Fields Copyright 1893 and 1906 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY NOTE xi

EXCURSIONS

A YANKEE IN CANADA

I. CONCORD TO MONTREAL 3

II. QUEBEC AND MONTMORENCI 20

III. ST. ANNE 40

IV. THE WALLS OF QUEBEC 69

V. THE SCENERY OF QUEBEC; AND THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE 85

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 103

A WALK TO WACHUSETT 133

THE LANDLORD 153

A WINTER WALK 163

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES 184

WALKING 205

AUTUMNAL TINTS 249

WILD APPLES 290

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT 323

TRANSLATIONS

THE PROMETHEUS BOUND OF ÆSCHYLUS 337

TRANSLATIONS FROM PINDAR 375

POEMS

NATURE 395

INSPIRATION 396

THE AURORA OF GUIDO 399

TO THE MAIDEN IN THE EAST 400

TO MY BROTHER 403

GREECE 404

THE FUNERAL BELL 405

THE MOON 406

THE FALL OF THE LEAF 407

THE THAW 409

A WINTER SCENE 410

TO A STRAY FOWL 411

POVERTY 412

PILGRIMS 413

THE DEPARTURE 414

INDEPENDENCE 415

DING DONG 417

OMNIPRESENCE 417

INSPIRATION (QUATRAIN) 418

MISSION 418

DELAY 418

PRAYER 418

A LIST OF THE POEMS AND BITS OF VERSE SCATTERED AMONG THOREAU'S PROSE WRITINGS EXCLUSIVE OF THE JOURNAL 420

INDEX 423

ILLUSTRATIONS

APPLE BLOSSOMS, _Carbon photograph (page 294)_ _Frontispiece_

WILD APPLE TREE, _Colored plate_

MONTREAL FROM MOUNT ROYAL 98

MOUNT WACHUSETT FROM THE WAYLAND HILLS 134

THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD 214

FALLEN LEAVES 270

WILD APPLE TREE 300

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The "Excursions" of the present volume follow the arrangement of the volume bearing that title in the Riverside Edition, which differed somewhat as to contents from the "Excursions" collected by Thoreau's sister after his death, and published in 1863 by Messrs. Ticknor & Fields. The Biographical Sketch by Emerson which prefaced the latter appears in the first volume of the present edition.

"A Yankee in Canada," which here, as in the Riverside Edition, is made the first of the series of Excursions, was formerly published in a volume with "Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers." Thoreau made this excursion to Canada with his friend Ellery Channing, and sent his narrative to Mr. Greeley, who wrote him regarding it, March 18, 1852: "I shall get you some money for the articles you sent me, though not immediately. As to your long account of a Canadian tour, I don't know. It looks unmanageable. Can't you cut it into three or four, and omit all that relates to time? The cities are described to death, but I know you are at home with Nature, and that _she_ rarely and slowly changes. Break this up, if you can, and I will try to have it swallowed and digested." Thoreau appears to have taken Greeley's advice, and the narrative was divided into chapters. But after it had been begun in _Putnam's_ in January, 1853, where it was entitled "Excursion to Canada," the author and the editor, who appears from the following letter to have been Mr. G. W. Curtis, disagreed regarding the expediency of including certain passages, and Thoreau withdrew all after the third chapter. The letter is as follows:--

NEW YORK, January 2, 1853.

FRIEND THOREAU.... I am sorry you and C. cannot agree so as to have your whole MS. printed. It will be worth nothing elsewhere after having partly appeared in _Putnam's_. I think it is a mistake to conceal the authorship of the several articles, making them all (so to speak) _editorial_; but _if_ that is done, don't you see that the elimination of very flagrant heresies (like your defiant Pantheism) becomes a necessity? If you had withdrawn your MS. on account of the abominable misprints in the first number, your ground would have been far more tenable. However, do what you will. Yours,

HORACE GREELEY.

"Natural History of Massachusetts" was contributed to _The Dial_, July, 1842, nominally as a review of some recent State reports. "A Walk to Wachusett" was printed in _The Boston Miscellany_, 1843. Mr. Sanborn, in his volume on Thoreau, prints a very interesting letter written by Margaret Fuller in 1841, in criticism of the verses which stand near the beginning of the paper, offered at that time for publication in _The Dial_. "The Landlord" was printed in _The Democratic Review_ for October, 1843. "A Winter Walk" appeared in _The Dial_ in the same month and year. Emerson in a letter to Thoreau, September 8, 1843, says: "I mean to send the 'Winter's Walk' to the printer to-morrow for _The Dial_. I had some hesitation about it, notwithstanding its faithful observation and its fine sketches of the pickerel-fisher and of the woodchopper, on account of _mannerism_, an old charge of mine,--as if, by attention, one could get the trick of the rhetoric; for example, to call a cold place sultry, a solitude public, a wilderness _domestic_ (a favorite word), and in the woods to insult over cities, armies, etc. By pretty free omissions, however, I have removed my principal objections." The address "The Succession of Forest Trees" was printed first in _The New York Tribune_, October 6, 1860, and was perhaps the latest of his writings which Thoreau saw in print.

After his death the interest which had already been growing was quickened by the successive publication in _The Atlantic Monthly_ of "Autumnal Tints" and "Wild Apples" in October and November, 1862, and "Night and Moonlight" November, 1863. The last named appeared just before the publication of the volume "Excursions," which collected the several papers.

"May Days" and "Days and Nights in Concord," which were printed in the Riverside Edition, are now omitted as consisting merely of extracts from Thoreau's Journal and therefore superseded by the publication of the latter in its complete form.

* * * * *

A few of Thoreau's poems, taken from the "Week" and elsewhere, were added by Mr. Emerson to the volume entitled "Letters to Various Persons" which he brought out in 1865, but it was not till the volume of "Miscellanies" was issued in the Riverside Edition that the otherwise unpublished verse of his that had appeared in _The Dial_ was gathered into a single volume. Besides the _Dial_ contributions, the Riverside "Miscellanies" contained a few poems that first found publication in Mr. Sanborn's Life of Thoreau. But the collection was not intended to be complete.

Many of Thoreau's poems, including his translations from the Anacreontics, are imbedded in the "Week," "Walden," and "Excursions," and it seemed best not to reproduce them in another volume. In 1895, shortly after the publication of the Riverside Thoreau, Mr. Henry S. Salt and Mr. Frank B. Sanborn brought out a book entitled "Poems of Nature by Henry David Thoreau," in which were collected "perhaps two thirds of [the poems] which Thoreau preserved." "Many of them," says the Introduction to that volume, "were printed by him, in whole or in part, among his early contributions to Emerson's _Dial_, or in his own two volumes, the _Week_ and _Walden_.... Others were given to Mr. Sanborn for publication, by Sophia Thoreau, the year after her brother's death (several appeared in the _Boston Commonwealth_ in 1863); or have been furnished from time to time by Mr. Blake, his literary executor." This volume contained a number of poems which had not before appeared in any of Thoreau's published books. Such poems are now added to those of the Riverside Edition. The present collection, however, no more than its predecessors pretends to completeness. It includes only those of Thoreau's poems which have been previously published and which are not contained in other volumes of this series. A list of the poems and scattered bits of verse printed in the other volumes will be found in an Appendix. The Journal also contains, especially in the early part, a number of heretofore unpublished poems which it seems best to retain in their original setting.

EXCURSIONS

A YANKEE IN CANADA

New England is by some affirmed to be an island, bounded on the north with the River Canada (so called from Monsieur Cane).--JOSSELYN'S RARITIES.

And still older, in Thomas Morton's "New English Canaan," published in 1632, it is said, on page 97, "From this Lake [Erocoise] Northwards is derived the famous River of Canada, so named, of Monsier de Cane, a French Lord, who first planted a colony of French in America."

A YANKEE IN CANADA