Henry David Thoreau: Walden

10. Baker Farm (continued)

    O Baker Farm!
                "Landscape where the richest element
                 Is a little sunshine innocent." ...
                "No one runs to revel
                 On thy rail-fenced lea." ...
                "Debate with no man hast thou,
                    With questions art never perplexed,
                 As tame at the first sight as now,
                    In thy plain russet gabardine dressed." ...
                "Come ye who love,
                    And ye who hate,
                 Children of the Holy Dove,
                    And Guy Faux of the state,
                 And hang conspiracies
                 From the tough rafters of the trees!"

Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows, morning and evening, reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character.

Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting go "bogging" ere this sunset. But he, poor man, disturbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair string, and he said it was his luck; but when we changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too. Poor John Field! -- I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it -- thinking to live by some derivative old-country mode in this primitive new country -- to catch perch with shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam's grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels.