I suspect that Thoreau's first poems date from the year 1836-37, since the "big red journal," in which they were copied, was begun in October, 1837. The verses entitled, "To the Maiden in the East," were by no means among the first, which date from 1836 or earlier; but near these in time was that poem called "Sympathy," which was the first of his writings to appear in Mr. Emerson's "Dial." These last were addressed, we are told, to Ellen Sewall, with whom, the legend says, both Henry and John Thoreau were in love. Few of these poems show any imitation of Mr. Emerson, whose own verses at that time were mostly unpublished, though he sometimes read them in private to his friends. But like most of Thoreau's verses, these indicate a close familiarity with the Elizabethan literature, and what directly followed it, in the time of the Stuarts. The measure of "Sympathy" was that of Davenant's "Gondibert," which Thoreau, almost alone of his contemporaries, had read; the thought was above Davenant, and ranged with Raleigh and Spenser. These verses will not soon be forgotten:—
"Lately, alas! I knew a gentle boy,
Whose features all were cast in Virtue's mould,
As one she had designed for Beauty's toy,
But after manned him for her own stronghold.
"Say not that Cæsar was victorious,
With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame;
In other sense this youth was glorious,
Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came.
. . . .
"Eternity may not the chance repeat,
But I must tread my single way alone,
In sad remembrance that we once did meet,
And know that bliss irrevocably gone.
"The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing,
For elegy has other subject none;
Each strain of music in my ears shall ring
Knell of departure from that other one.
. . . .
"Is't then too late the damage to repair?
Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft
The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,
But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.
"If I but love that virtue which he is,
Though it be scented in the morning air,
Still shall we be dearest acquaintances,
Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare."
The other poem seems to have been written later than the separation of which that one so loftily speaks; and it vibrates with a tenderer chord than sympathy. It begins,—
"Low in the eastern sky
Is set thy glancing eye,"
and then it goes on with the picture of lover-like things,—the thrushes and the flowers, until, he says,