I AM A PARCEL OF VAIN STRIVINGS
by: Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862)
- AM a parcel of vain strivings
tied
- By a chance bond together,
- Dangling this way and that, their links
- Were made so loose and wide,
- Methinks,
- For milder weather.
-
- A bunch of violets without their roots,
- And sorrel intermixed,
- Encircled by a wisp of straw
- Once coiled about their shoots,
- The law
- By which I'm fixed.
-
- A nosegay which Time clutched from out
- Those fair Elysian fields,
- With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
- Doth make the rabble rout
- That waste
- The day he yields.
-
- And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
- Drinking my juices up,
- With no root in the land
- To keep my branches green,
- But stand
- In a bare cup.
-
- Some tender buds were left upon my stem
- In mimicry of life,
- But ah! the children will not know,
- Till time has withered them,
- The woe
- With which they're rife.
-
- But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
- And after in life's vase
- Of glass set while I might survive,
- But by a kind hand brought
- Alive
- To a strange place.
-
- That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
- And by another year,
- Such as God knows, with freer air,
- More fruits and fairer flowers
- Will bear,
- While I droop here.
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