true to these models, his own style is direct and potent, as in description of his first night in the woods or the picture of the moose-hunt. Again, some sentences are as laconic as Carlyle and Emerson;—"Say the thing with which you labor. . . . Be faithful to your genius. Write in the strain which interests you most. Consult not the popular taste." If he had the courage to live his thoughts, he also had the persistency and sincerity to exemplify these literary precepts.
In contrast with such passages of frank directness are occasional paragraphs of involved mysticism, especially in the later volumes unrevised by his own hand. In the main, however, his symbolism and imagery are vigorous, often commanding. Such is the battle-array of the red maples and the yellow birches, included in "Autumn." Among his more familiar metaphors, is one frequently borrowed by later writers, the picture of Cape Cod with her "bared and bended arm, boxing with northeast storms, and ever and anon, heaving up her adversary from the lap of the earth,—ready to thrust forward her other fist, which keeps guard the while upon her breast at Cape Ann."
In justice both to Thoreau and Lowell it may be pertinent to recall a few words from the closing paragraph of that essay in "My Study Windows,"
