8. The Henry David Thoreau Clue

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.

Thoreau's close friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote: The soul comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal. --It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some strange new disguise.

LINK: The Eulogy of Henry David Thoreau by Ralph Waldo Emerson