Pioneers! O pioneers!
NOTES AND QUESTIONS
Discussion. 1. Whom does the poet address in stanza 1? 2. What does he ask them if they have ready? 3. Why cannot they “tarry here”? 4. How does the poet characterize the “western youths”? 5. Why must the Pioneers “take up the task eternal”? 6. What new world do they enter upon? 7. Mention some of the tasks that the Pioneers must do. 8. Where do these pioneers come from? 9. Why does the poet mourn and yet exult?
Phrases
- [bear the brunt, 557, 6]
- [sinewy races, 557, 7]
- [task eternal, 558, 3]
- [we debouch, 558, 6]
- [surface broad surveying, 558, 15]
- [continental blood intervein’d, 558, 22]
THE BEANFIELD
HENRY D. THOREAU
Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half chiefly with beans, but a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips.
Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small [Herculean labor], I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got [strength like Antaeus]. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my curious labor all summer—to make this portion of the earth’s surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work. It is a fine broad leaf to look on. My [auxiliaries are the dews] and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is [lean and effete]. My enemies are worms, cool days and, most of all, woodchucks. The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.