Their lively labor rests.
Where is the finch, the thrush
I used to hear?
Ah, they could well abide
The dying year.
Now they no more return,
I hear them not;
They have remained to mourn,
Or else forgot.
As the first letter of Thoreau to Emerson was to thank him for his lofty friendship, so now the first letter to Mrs. Emerson, after leaving her house, was to say similar things, with a passing allusion to her love of flowers and of gardening, in which she surpassed all his acquaintance in Concord, then and afterward. A letter to Emerson followed, touching on the Dial and on several of his new and old acquaintance. "Rockwood Hoar" is the person since known as judge and cabinet officer,—the brother of Senator Hoar, and of Thoreau's special friends Elizabeth and Edward Hoar. Channing is the poet, who had lately printed his first volume, without finding many readers.