Morning Hymns

MY FRIENDS WHY SHOULD WE LIVE

My friends, why should we live?
Life is an idle war, a toilsome peace;
Today I would not give
One small consent for its securest ease.

Shall we out-wear the year
In our pavilions on its dusty plain
And yet no signal hear
To strike our tents and take the road again?

Or else drag up the slope
The heavy ordinance of nature's train?
Useless but in the hope,
Some far remote and heavenward hill to gain.


NATURE

O nature I do not aspire
To be the highest in thy quire,
To be a meteor in the 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In some withdrawn unpublic mead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 reeed,
Or in the woods with leafy din
Whisper the still evening in,
For I had 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.
Some still work give me to do
Only be it near you.

Henry David Thoreau