imed as to some solemn chant, he
began, the paper still folded in his hands:--

"A lonely wand'rer stands beside the stone
That marks the grave where Thoreau's ashes lie;
An object more revered than monarch's throne,
Or pyramids beneath Egyptian sky.

"He turned his feet from common ways of men,
And forward went, nor backward looked around;
Sought truth and beauty in the forest glen,
And in each opening flower glory found.

"He paced the woodland paths in rain and sun;
With joyous thrill he viewed the season's sign;
And in the murmur of the meadow run
With raptured ear he heard a voice divine.

"Truth was the beacon ray that lured him on.
It lit his path on plain and mountain height,
In wooded glade and on the flow'ry lawn--
Where'er he strayed, it was his guiding light.

"Close by the hoary birch and swaying pine
To Nature's voice he bent a willing ear;
And there remote from men he made his shrine,
Her face to see, her many tongues to hear.

"The robin piped his morning song for him;
The wild crab there exhaled its rathe perfume;
The loon laughed loud and by the river's brim
The water willow waved its verdant plume.

"For him the squirrels gamboled in the pines,
And through the pane the morning sunbeams glanced;
The zephyrs gently stirred his climbing vines
And on his floor the evening shadows danced.

"To him the earth was all a fruitful field.
He saw no barren waste, no fallow land;
The swamps and mountain tops would harvests yield;
And Nature's stores he garnered on the strand.

"There the essential facts of life he found.
The full ripe grain he winnowed from the chaff;
And in the pine tree,--rent by lightning round,
He saw God's hand and read his autograph.

"Against the fixed and complex ways of life
His earnest, transcendental soul rebelled;
And chose the path that shunned the wasted strife,
Ignored the sham, and simple life upheld.

"Men met him, looked and passed, but knew him not,
And critics scoffed and deemed him not a seer.
He lives, and scoff and critic are forgot;
We feel his presence and his words we hear.

"He passed without regret,--oft had his breath
Bequeathed again to earth his mortal clay,
Believing that the darkened night of death
Is but the dawning of eternal day."

The chanting voice died away and--the woods were still. The deep
waters of Walden darkened in the long shadows