Vox Populi
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John Burroughs: Waiting
Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind nor tide nor sea;
I rave no more ‘gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.
I stay my haste, I make delays—
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways
And what is mine shall know my face.
Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me,
No wind can drive my bark astray
Nor change the tide of destiny.
What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it has sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.
The waters know their own, and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.
The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.
Public Domain
John Burroughs (1837 – 1921) was an American naturalist and nature writer, active in the U.S. conservation movement. Although almost forgotten today, during his life he was well-known and highly regarded as a writer and defender of nature, and many celebrities of the day were his friends, including Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Henry Ford (who gave him the first automobile in the Hudson Valley), Harvey Firestone, and Thomas Edison. One of Burroughs’ closest friends was Walt Whitman who praised Burroughs’s work. He is often quoted in popular writing, but his words are sometimes misattributed to Zen philosophy, for example the exhortation “Leap, and the net will appear.“
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Sweet. He reminds me of Yeats. Specifically, “An Irish Airman: foresees his death”
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
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Thanks, Matthew!
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I second, with gratitude, Luz Vega Hidalho’s comment…
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Thanks, Laure-Anne.
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It’s so beautiful, the sound, the words, the wisdom and the meaning of the poem. The poet has not left it to someone else to tell him what life or death should mean to him, he has looked deeply within him, and reviewed his whole life journey. All that he has learned and experienced have contributed to who he has become. His experiences live within him, all have been transformed into John Burroughs. He alone has understood and has decided what his life has meant to him, and likewise his death.
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Thank you, Luz. You have explicated the poem beautifully.
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