This date in 1817 Henry David Thoreau, our nation’s widely revered philosopher of nature, was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He was born into a shopkeeper’s family, and early showed himself a versatile master of many trades, including the management of his family business of making pencils, and as a land surveyor. Later, after graduating from Harvard, he lectured throughout the Northeast states, now as a “member” of the group of cultural luminaries—that included Nathaniel Hawthorne and Bronson Alcott—orbiting Ralph Waldo Emerson, leading advocate of the Transcendentalist philosophical movement.
Social and engaging enough when in the company of the Concord-based group of intellectuals, Thoreau could be “prickly,” according to his long-time friend Emerson, particularly when discussing his views, which were uniquely his own. Indeed, in eulogizing Thoreau, Emerson said “there was something military in his nature, not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not see himself except in opposition.”
Thoreau was a “loner,” both in thought and lifestyle. He was never so happy than when he was alone in nature, recording with a scientific eye what he saw and felt. He concluded that we are a part of nature, not separate from it, and its “primitive vigor” is in us. “Primeval, untamed, untamable,” it is a force not always kind to us.
The iconic Thoreau is best remembered for his masterwork Walden, named for the pond by which he had a small cabin outside Concord, where he communed with his beloved “wild.” He was also an essayist of the first rank, as attested to by his much-read Civil Disobedience, in which he argues personal morality supersedes that imposed by the state, and by Slavery in Massachusetts, in which he expresses his strong abolitionist views. But he had always thought of himself as a man of letters, and that included the top rung of literature—poetry. Here’s a terse one of his that seems both apt and timely today—especially so if you substitute the word “nation” for world.
EPITAPH ON THE WORLD
Here lies the body of this world,
Whose soul, alas! to hell is hurled.
Its golden youth long since was past,
Its silver manhood went as fast,
An iron age drew on at last;
‘Tis vain its character to tell,
The several fates which it befell,
What year it died, when ‘twill arise,
We only know that here it lies.