The jay screams through the chestnut wood;
    The crisped and yellow leaves around
  Are hue and texture of my mood,—­
    And these rough burrs my heirlooms on the ground.

  The threadbare trees, so poor and thin,—­
    They are no wealthier than I;
  But with as brave a core within
    They rear their boughs to the October sky.

  Poor knights they are which bravely wait
    The charge of Winter’s cavalry,
  Keeping a simple Roman state,
    Discumbered of their Persian luxury.

H.D.  THOREAU.

The Rhodora.

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?

  In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
  I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
  Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
  To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 
  The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
  Made the black water with their beauty gay;
  Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
  And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
  Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
  This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
  Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
  Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: 
  Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! 
  I never thought to ask, I never knew: 
  But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
  The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

R.W.  EMERSON.

Nature.

  O nature!  I do not aspire
  To be the highest in thy quire,—­
  To be a meteor in the sky,
  Or comet that may range on high;
  Only a zephyr that may blow
  Among the reeds by the river low;
  Give me thy most privy place
  Where to run my airy race.

  In some withdrawn, unpublic mead
  Let me sigh upon a reed,
  Or in the woods, with leafy din,
  Whisper the still evening in. 
  Some still work give me to do,—­
  Only—­be it near to you! 
  For I’d rather be thy child
  And pupil, in the forest wild,
  Than be the king of men elsewhere,
  And most sovereign slave of care.

H.D.  THOREAU.

My Strawberry.

  O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause
  To reckon thee.  I ask what cause
  Set free so much of red from heats
  At core of earth, and mixed such sweets
  With sour and spice:  what was that strength
  Which out of darkness, length by length,
  Spun all thy shining thread of vine,
  Netting the fields in bond as thine. 
  I see thy tendrils drink by sips
  From grass and clover’s smiling lips;
  I hear thy roots dig down for wells,
  Tapping the meadow’s hidden cells;
     Whole generations of green things,
  Descended from long lines of springs,
  I see make room for thee to bide
  A quiet comrade by their side;
  I see the creeping peoples go
  Mysterious journeys to and fro,