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

Chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago, I resolved to take more such walks, and make acquaintance with another side of nature. I have done so. According to Pliny,...

Packed in my mind lie all the clot… Which outward nature wears, And in its fashion’s hourly change It all things else repairs. In vain I look for change abroad,

MY life is like a stroll upon the… As near the ocean’s edge as I can… My tardy steps its waves sometimes… Sometimes I stay to let them over… My sole employment is, and scrupul…

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…

Let such pure hate still underprop Our love, that we may be Each other’s conscience, And have our sympathy Mainly from thence.

Here lies the body of this world, Whose soul alas to hell is hurled. This golden youth long since was p… Its silver manhood went as fast, An iron age drew on at last;

After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what—how—when—where? But the...

When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed ...

My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.

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...

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…

Written in Concord, July 19, 1842; first published in The Boston Miscellany Vol. 3, No. 3, January, 1843. Summer and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of the mountains in ou...