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They reckon ill who leave me out;When me they fly, I am the wings;I am the doubter and the doubt,And I the hymn the Brahmin singsThe strong gods pine for myabode,And pine in vain the sacred Seven,But thou, meek lover of the good!Find me, and turn thy back onheaven.This poem, published in the firstnumber of the Atlantic Monthlymagazine (1857), confused readersunfamiliar with Brahma, the highestHindu god, the eternal and infinitesoul of the universe. Emersonhad this advice for his readers:“Tell them to say Jehovah insteadof Brahma.”The British critic Matthew Arnoldsaid the most important writings inEnglish in the 19th century hadbeen Wordsworth’s poems andEmerson’s essays. A great prosepoet,Emerson influenced a longline of American poets, includingWalt Whitman, Emily Dickinson,Edwin Arlington Robinson, WallaceStevens, Hart Crane, and RobertFrost. He is also credited withinfluencing the philosophies ofJohn Dewey, George Santayana,Friedrich Nietzsche, and WilliamJames.Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)Henry David Thoreau, of Frenchand Scottish descent, was born inConcord and made it his permanenthome. From a poor family, likeHENRY DAVID THOREAUPhoto © The BettmannArchiveEmerson, he worked his waythrough Harvard. Throughout hislife, he reduced his needs to thesimplest level and managed to liveon very little money, thus maintaininghis independence. In essence,he made living his career. A nonconformist,he attempted to live his lifeat all times according to his rigorousprinciples. This attempt wasthe subject of many of his writings.Thoreau’s masterpiece, Walden,or, Life in the Woods (1854), is theresult of two years, two months, andtwo days (from 1845 to 1847) hespent living in a cabin he built atWalden Pond on property owned byEmerson. In Walden, Thoreau consciouslyshapes this time into oneyear, and the book is carefully constructedso the seasons are subtlyevoked in order. The book alsois organized so that the simplestearthly concerns come first (in thesection called “Economy,” he describesthe expenses of building acabin); by the ending, the bookhas progressed to meditations onthe stars.In Walden, Thoreau, a lover oftravel books and the author of several,gives us an anti-travel bookthat paradoxically opens the innerfrontier of self-discovery as noAmerican book had up to this time.As deceptively modest as Thoreau’sascetic life, it is no less than a guideto living the classical ideal of thegood life. Both poetry and philosophy,this long poetic essay challengesthe reader to examine his orher life and live it authentically. Thebuilding of the cabin, described in29