SOURCE: “‘'Converging With the Sky'”: The Imagery of Celestial Bodies in Thoreau's Poetry,” in Thoreau Journal Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 3, July 1977, pp. 15-28.

In the following essay, Kaiser surveys the celestial imagery of Thoreau's poetry and concludes the inconsistencies in his view stems from “unavoidable conflicts” in Thoreau's world.

Celestial bodies pervade Thoreau's verse as symbols of spiritual facts. Thoreau sees heavenly bodies in a new way; by using a naturalist's careful observation of their peculiarities, he develops the symbolic significance of the heavens beyond the usual Romantic associations: “The sun which I know is not Apollo, nor is the evening star Venus,”¹ he writes in the Journal. In Thoreau's hands celestial phenomena become companions of the spirit (“And tread of high-souled men go by, / Their thoughts conversing with the sky,”²) and ultimately instruments of it (“Ye stars my spear-heads in the sky, / My arrow-tips ye are.” [55]

In the...