"James Russell Lowell’s A Fable for Critics is published in which he refers to Thoreau:
There comes—, for instance; to see him’s a rare sport,
Tread in Emerson’s tracks with legs painfully short;
How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face,
To keep step with the mystagogue’s natural pace!
He follows as close as a stick to a rocket,
His fingers exploring the prophet’s each pocket.
Fie, for shame, brother bard; with good fruit of your own,
Can’t you let neighbor Emerson’s orchards alone?
Besides, ’tis no use, you’ll not find e’en a core,—
—has picked up all the windfalls before.
They might strip every tree, and E. never would catch ’em,
His Hesperides have no rude dragon to watch ’em;
When they send him a dishfull, and ask him to try ’em,
He never suspects how the sly rogues came by ’em;
He wonders why ’tis there are none such his trees on,
And thinks ’em best he has tasted this season."
(A Fable for Critics, 32)
25 October 1848. | The Walden Woods Project
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