Before he became a pioneering ecological thinker, Thoreau was a poet and this youthful work contains the blueprint for his development
Sic Vita
(“It is but thin soil where we stand; I have felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw, which reminded me of myself”
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers)
