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Friendship

I think awhile of Love, and while I think,
Love is to me a world,
Sole meat and sweetest drink,
And close connecting link
Tween heaven and earth.

I only know it is, not how or why,
My greatest happiness;
However hard I try,
Not if I were to die,
Can I explain.

I fain would ask my friend how it can be,
But when the time arrives,
Then Love is more lovely
Than anything to me,
And so I’m dumb.

For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak,
But only thinks and does;
Though surely out ’twill leak
Without the help of Greek,
Or any tongue.

A man may love the truth and practise it,
Beauty he may admire,
And goodness not omit,
As much as may befit
To reverence.

But only when these three together meet,
As they always incline,
And make one soul the seat,
And favorite retreat,
Of loveliness;

When under kindred shape, like loves and hates
And a kindred nature,
Proclaim us to be mates,
Exposed to equal fates
Eternally;

And each may other help, and service do,
Drawing Love’s bands more tight,
Service he ne’er shall rue
While one and one make two,
And two are one;

In such case only doth man fully prove
Fully as man can do,
What power there is in Love
His inmost soul to move
Resistlessly.

______

Two sturdy oaks I mean, which side by side,
Withstand the winter’s storm,
And spite of wind and tide,
Grow up the meadow’s pride,
For both are strong

Above they barely touch, but undermined
Down to their deepest source,
Admiring you shall find
Their roots are intertwined
Insep’rably.
Henry David Thoreau

American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12,1817, in Concord Massachusetts.
Thoreau graduated from Harvard College (now Harvard University) in 1937 and He studied Greek, Latin and German in Harvard. After He graduated from College and struggled to find what is his real career for a while. He befriended with very famous writer, a fellow Concord fellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Thoreau had unstable jobs which were land surveyor or his father’s pencil factory work.  He built a small home and stayed at the house for two years  in Walden Pond which it belonged to Emerson. He lived in the nature and observed all things closely as well. He became known for his belief in Transcendentalism and civil disobedience, and a dedicated abolitionist.

가슴이 뜨거웠던 시인, 저널리스트, 에세이스트, 그는 그런 사람이었다. 자연을 사랑하고 자연을 응시하며 그가 생각했던 진정한 사회는 노예제도를 폐지해야 하며, 정부에 세금을 내는 것 조차도 불필요하다고 느낄 정도로 그는 자유인이었다.

그의 저서 “Civil Disobedience” (published in 1849)는 많은 사회운동가들에게 무폭력적인 사회 저항운동을 펼칠 수 있는 격려가 되었고, 그런 이유로 사회운동가들의 애호하는 저자가 되었다.

그의 책을 읽고 감명을 받고 영향을 받은 닥터 마르틴 루터 킹 목사, 인도의  마하트마 간디 수상은 그 대표적인 예라고 할 수 있다.

위의 시는 우정을 노래한 시다. 가슴에 새겨볼 그의 시를 한 주를 마감지으며, 새롭게 한 주를 시작하는 날에 띄운다. 여름에 태어난 그, 가장 뜨거운 가슴으로 가장 깊이있게 사물을 관찰하며 시대를 논했던 시인, 작가, 그는 세월이 많이 흘러도 여전히 기억될 것이다.

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