Early poetry break

Today's poetry break comes a day early, as I don't think I'll be able to post tomorrow -- family duties call.

On the recommendation of a friend, I've been reading a fascinating book entitled The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. It's fascinating because I'm learning a great deal more about the Transcendentalist movement of the 1800s. We all know bits and pieces, I think. You know Henry David Thoreau and Walden Pond, you know Ralph Waldo Emerson. But this (quite long) book looks at three women who were integral to the success of that movement, and it is a very interesting look at the life of women at the time. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody did many things in her lifetime, but one of the most important was to work as an editor and bookseller, ensuring that the works of those mentioned above as well as Nathaniel Hawthorn and Margaret Fuller were published. So thank Elizabeth Palmer Peabody for giving us the poem below, which still rings true today. Enjoy!

Men Say They Know Many Things

Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, —
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.

— by Henry David Thoreau

Happy Birthday, Thoreau!

Actually, there are a lot of birthdays today, Henry David Thoreau is a personal hero of mine so he gets top billing today.

Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817. He's best known as the author of Walden, and the essay "Civil Disobedience." Form Garrison Keiller on the Writer's Almanac:

He became the first member of his family to go to college. He went to Harvard, but didn't much care for the place. He didn't much care for school teaching either. He went to live with Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord and did odd jobs around the house and took care of the children. It was Emerson who encouraged Thoreau to write poetry and suggested that Thoreau keep a journal, both of which Thoreau continued to do for the rest of his life.

He was 27 years old when he built that little cabin on the edge of Walden Pond and moved in, in an attempt, he said, to "Simplify, simplify, simplify ... to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach."

Also with birthday today: George Eastman, Pablo Neruda, and Julius Caesar, to name but a few.