Photograph by Hilmi Işılak / Pexels

On Fields o’er Which the Reaper’s Hand Has Pass’d

On fields o’er which the reaper’s hand has pass’d 

Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun, 

My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind 

And of such fineness as October airs, 

There after harvest could I glean my life 

A richer harvest reaping without toil, 

And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will 

In subtler webs than finest summer haze.

I Am the Autumnal Sun

I am the autumnal sun, 

With autumn gales my race is run; 

When will the hazel put forth its flowers, 

Or the grape ripen under my bowers? 

When will the harvest or the hunter’s moon 

Turn my midnight into mid-noon? 

I am all sere and yellow, 

And to my core mellow. 

The mast is dropping within my woods, 

The winter is lurking within my moods, 

And the rustling of the withered leaf 

Is the constant music of my grief...

Tall Ambrosia

Among the signs of autumn I perceive 

The Roman wormwood (called by learned men 

Ambrosia elatior, food for gods,— 

For to impartial science the humblest weed 

Is as immortal once as the proudest flower—) 

Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes 

As I cross the now neglected garden. 

—We trample underfoot the food of gods 

And spill their nectar in each drop of dew— 

My honest shoes, fast friends that never stray 

Far from my couch, thus powdered, countryfied, 

Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure, 

At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss 

Of those well-dressed ones who no morning dew 

Nor Roman wormwood ever have been through, 

Who never walk but are transported rather— 

For what old crime of theirs I do not gather.

Henry David Thoreau

• Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American philosopher—a disciple of American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson—and a writer, best known as the author of Walden, which proposed a program of simple living and self-dependence, and the essay, “Civil Disobedience,” which provides redress for unjust laws (such as the slavery laws of his time). His nature and political writings have influenced countless writers, including Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi. His poetry reflected the same concern for the natural world and political justice.