The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Last Harvest, by John Burroughs

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Title: The Last Harvest

Author: John Burroughs

Release Date: July 25, 2006 [EBook #18903]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

THE LAST HARVEST

BY

JOHN BURROUGHS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

* * * * *

_But who is he with modest looks
And clad in homely russet brown?
He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noon-day grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.

The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart--
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart._

WORDSWORTH

PREFACE

Most of the papers garnered here were written after fourscore
years--after the heat and urge of the day--and are the fruit of a long
life of observation and meditation.

The author's abiding interest in Emerson is shown in his close and
eager study of the Journals during these later years. He hungered for
everything that concerned the Concord Sage, who had been one of the
most potent influences in his life. Although he could discern flies in
the Emersonian amber, he could not brook slight or indifference toward
Emerson in the youth of to-day. Whatever flaws he himself detected, he
well knew that Emerson would always res