A Condensed Biography of Thoreau's Life

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/poet/thoreau.html

If anyone besides me cares about what he did before he moved to Walden and after he left...

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W. B. Yeats (1888)

Walden Pond and Thoreau's Cabin

Walden Pond

http://www.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1984920_1984861,00.html?iid=perma_share

A replica of Thoreau's Cabin at Walden Pond State Reservation, Concord, MA

http://www.4peaks.com/thwalden02.jpg

Emerson's Transparent Eyeball

"This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibed delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself."

Thoreau, Walden (90). 

Caricature of Emerson as a transparent eyeball 

by Christopher Pearce Cranch

"Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God" (996). 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)

http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/transcendentaloverhead.htm

The Witches' Song by Ben Jonson

1 WITCH.

"I HAVE been all day looking after
A raven feeding upon a quarter:
And, soone as she turn'd her beak to the south,
I snatch'd this morsell out of her mouth."

2 WITCH.

"I have beene gathering wolves haires,
The madd dogges foames, and adders eares;
The spurging of a dead man's eyes:
And all since the evening starre did rise."

3 WITCH.

"I last night lay all alone
O' the ground, to heare the mandrake grone;
And pluckt him up, though he grew full low:
And, as I had done, the cocke did crow."

4 WITCH.

"And I ha' beene chusing out this scull
From charnell houses that were full;
From private grots, and publike pits:
And frighted a sexton out of his wits."

5 WITCH.

"Under a cradle I did crepe
By day; and, when the childe was a-sleepe
At night, I suck'd the breath; and rose,
And pluck'd the nodding nurse by the nose.

6 WITCH.

"I had a dagger: what did I with that?
Killed an infant to have his fat.
A piper it got at a church-ale.
I bade him again blow wind i' the taile."

7 WITCH.

"A murderer yonder was hung in chaines;
The sunne and the wind had shrunke his veins:
I bit off a sinew; I clipp'd his haire;
I brought off his ragges, that danc'd i' the ayre."

8 WITCH.

"The scrich-owles egges and the feathers blacke,
The bloud of the frogge, and the bone in his backe
I have been getting; and made of his skin
A purset, to keepe Sir Cranion in."

9 WITCH.

"And I ha' beene plucking (plants among)
Hemlock, henbane, adders-tongue,
Night-shade, moone-wort, libbards-bane;
And twise by the dogges was like to be tane."

10 WITCH.

"I from the jaw's of a gardiner's bitch
Did snatch these bones, and then leap'd the ditch:
Yet went I back to the house againe,
Kill'd the blacke cat, and here is the braine."

11 WITCH.

"I went to the toad, breedes under the wall,
I charmed him out, and he came at my call;
I scratch'd out the eyes of the owle before;
I tore the batts wing: what would you have more?"

DAME.

"Yes: I have brought, to helpe your vows,
Horned poppie, cypresse boughes,
The fig-tree wild, that grows on tombes,
And juice, that from the larch-tree comes,
The basiliskes bloud, and the vipers skin:--
And now our orgies let's begin."

Taken from Percy's Reliques

Here is an example of Ululation.

"Fragments"

I Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side. II Where got I that truth? Out of a medium's mouth. Out of nothing it came, Out of the forest loam, Out of dark night where lay The crowns of Nineveh.  - W. B. Yeats, from The Tower (1928)