The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods Library

Thoreau's Life & Writings: Poetry
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“But since we sailed...”
by Henry D. Thoreau

            But since we sailed
            Some things have failed,
            And many a dream
            Gone down the stream.

Here then an aged shepherd dwelt,
Who to his flock his substance dealt,
And ruled them with a vigorous crook,
By precept of the sacred Book;
But he the pierless bridge passed o’er,
And solitary left the shore. 

Anon a youthful pastor came,
Whose crook was not unknown to fame,
His lambs he viewed with gentle glance,
Spread o’er the country’s wide expanse,
And fed with “Mosses from the Manse.”
Here was our Hawthorne in the dale,
And here the shepherd told his tale.

A Note on the Text:

• Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers  [The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) p. 16]

• Title from first line.

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