Henry David Thoreau: His Nature

I am enjoying the poetry of the philosophers.  It is an elixer for me. I feel when we lose nature, that is when we will mourn a part of ourselves. I feel on a subconscious level many are feeling the loss of species extinction, pollution and environmental damage. We are nature and nature is us. We are inseparable. That is why people tie themselves to trees to make a point or blockade the damming of rivers, they feel the connection to something unique, that they can see will be lost if human’s transform its intrinsic beauty. That is why many chose nature for their holidays. It is the place where they can go and forget about the human made world, they can go and relax. Because nature never works hard, it is just in harmony with itself. There is no stress, only harmony. That is the hypnotic rhythm we subconsciously seek to connect to.

Here is a little overview from Wikipedia about him and then his poem.  Refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist.^[1] He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau’s books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and “Yankee” love of practical detail.^[2] He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life’s true essential needs.^[2]

He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nature

O Nature! I do not aspire
To be the highest in thy choir, –
To be a meteor in thy sky,
Or comet that may range on high;
Only a zephyr that may blow
Among the reeds by the river low;
Give me thy most privy place
Where to run my airy race.

In some withdrawn, unpublic mead
Let me sigh upon a reed,
Or in the woods, with leafy din,
Whisper the still evening in:
Some still work give me to do, –
Only – be it near to you!

For I’d rather be thy child
And pupil, in the forest wild,
Than be the king of men elsewhere,
And most sovereign slave of care;
To have one moment of thy dawn,
Than share the city’s year forlorn.