With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting ...

I am a parcel of vain strivings ti… By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their… Were made so loose and wide, Methinks,

Great God, I ask for no meaner pe… Than that I may not disappoint my… That in my action I may soar as h… As I can now discern with this cl… And next in value, which thy kindn…

As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill ...

But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of...

In October I went a-graping to the river meadows, and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance than for food. There too I admired, though I did not gathe...

Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and t...

SALMON Brook, Penichook, Ye sweet waters of my brain, When shall I look, Or cast the hook,

Away! away! away! away! Ye have not kept your secret well, I will abide that other day, Those other lands ye tell. Has time no leisure left for these…

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…

I heartily accept the motto—“That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to th...

To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The buck-eye does not grow in New England, and the mocking-bird is rarely ...

Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with light, so soft and green and shady that the Druids wou...

Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird, Melting thy pinions in thy upward… Lark without song, and messenger o… Circling above the hamlets as they… Or else, departing dream, and shad…

THOUGH all the fates should pro… Leave not your native land behind. The ship, becalmed, at length stan… The steed must rest beneath the hi… But swiftly still our fortunes pac…