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CONTENTS

[The sub-titles under each division are of Thoreau's poems and snatches of verse therein included.]

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"Here then an aged shepherd dwelt"

"On Ponkawtasset, since we took our way"

SUNDAY

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Greece, who am I that should remember thee "

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"Some tumultuous little rill "

"I make ye an offer "

"Conscience is instinct bred in the house "

"Such water do the gods distill"

"That Phaeton of our day"

MONDAY

"Though all the fates should
MOUNTAINS

"The western wind came lumbering in "

"Then idle Time ran gadding by "
"Now chiefly is my natal hour"
RUMORS FROM AN EOLIAN HARP

“Away! away! away! away!"

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"This is my Carnac, whose unmeasured dome "

"True kindness is a pure divine affinity"

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THE ATLANTIDES

"My love must be as free "

"The Good how can we trust? "

"Nature doth have her dawn each day"

FRIENDS, ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN, AND LOVERS
THE INWARD MORNING

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"My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read " FRIDAY

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THE POET'S DELAY

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"Men dig and dive but cannot my wealth spend

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The portrait prefacing this volume is from the crayon

by S. W. Rowse in 1854, preserved in the Public Library of Concord.

A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND

MERRIMACK RIVERS

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Ir was in August and September, 1839, as
the chronicle notes, that the voyage here re-
corded was made. Thoreau was just past his
twenty-second birthday; he had been two years
out of college, and though he had thus far printed
nothing, he had already, four years before, be-
gun that practice of noting his experience, ob-
servation, and reflection in a diary which he
continued through life, so that not only did his
journals furnish him with the first draft of what
he published in his lifetime, but they formed a
magazine from which, after his death, friendly
editors drew successive volumes.

The Week is much more than a mere re-
production of his journal during the period
under consideration. It was not published as a
book until 1849, ten years after the excursion
which it commemorated; but in its final form
were inclosed many verses and some prose pas-
sages which had already appeared in the short-

lived historic The Dial. It will be remem-
bered that Thoreau was not only a contributor
to that periodical from the beginning, but for a
while had editorial charge of it; the editing, in-
deed, seemed to be handed about from one to
another of the circle most concerned in its issue.
Thus in the first number, July, 1840, appeared
the excursus on Aulus Persius Flaccus, printed
in the Week, pp. 405-412. So, also, his poems
on Friendship saw the light first in the second
number of The Dial, and there also appeared
the poems The Inward Morning, The Poet's
Delay, Rumors from an Eolian Harp, and
others, as well as the study of Anacreon, with
examples in translation. It is easy for the
reader to see that the Week is Thoreau's com-
monplace book as well as journal.

He was living in his hut on Walden Pond
when he edited his manuscripts for publication
in book form, and Alcott visiting him one even-
ing there heard him read some passages from
the work. It is interesting to observe how im-
mediately this man of fine instincts perceived
the worth of what had as yet struck his ear
only, listening as a friend. "The book," he
writes in his diary, "is purely American, fra-
grant with the life of New England woods and
streams, and could have been written nowhere
else. Especially am I touched by his suffi-

ciency and soundness, his aboriginal vigor, as if a man had once more come into Nature who knew what Nature meant him to do with her; Virgil and White of Selborne, and Izaak Walton, and Yankee settler all in one. I came home at midnight through the snowy woodpaths, and slept with the pleasing dream that presently the press would give me two books to be proud of,- Emerson's Poems and Thoreau's Week."1

This was written in March, 1847, and Thoreau was probably just about to try the publishers, if his manuscript were not even now resting in his hut from one of its journeys. For in a letter to Emerson, at that time in England, written November 14, 1847, Thoreau says, "I suppose you will like to hear of my book, though I have nothing worth writing about it. Indeed, for the last month or two, I have forgotten it, but shall certainly remember it again. Wiley & Putnam, Munroe, the Harpers, and Crosby & Nichols, have all declined printing it with the least risk to themselves; but Wiley & Putnam will print it in their series, and any of them anywhere, at my risk. If I liked the book well enough, I should not delay; but for the present I am indifferent. I believe this is, after all,

1 A. Bronson Alcott; his Life and Philosophy. By F. B. Sanborn and William T. Harris, p. 446.

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