the East," quoted in an earlier chapter, the poem on the Concord River, the noble panegyric to the mountains, and the more familiar stanzas, "Sic Vita," "To a Swallow" and "Sympathy." Some of these poems had appeared in The Dial, but were here given permanent lodgment.
The rare poetic promise of Thoreau's early manhood, versus the suppression of poetic form in later life, will always be a regretful and puzzling theme to his critics. Among other incidental statements is the explanation, given by him during his last weeks, that he was dissuaded from writing and publishing more poetry by Emerson's criticisms. Such assertion, which comes through intermediate sources, seems scarcely adequate to explain his renunciation. Thoreau was too self-reliant to accept any one's verdict on a matter involving self-development. The real cause for the gradual and almost complete transference to prose forms is probably found in the deepening earnestness and serious studies of nature and life to which his mature years were devoted. Doubtless, the criticisms upon his ruggedness of metre and mystical enigmas of thought, many of them quite as applicable to Emerson's own verse, fostered the inclination to abandon metrical form, but his poetic imagery remained to the last. As Carlyle's prose
