Criticism > Poetry > Thoreau, Henry David - Henry W. Wells (essay date 1944)

Thoreau, Henry David - Henry W. Wells (essay date 1944)

Henry W. Wells (essay date 1944)

SOURCE: “An Evaluation of Thoreau's Poetry,” in Thoreau: A Century of Criticism, edited by Walter Harding, Southern Methodist University Press, 1954, pp. 150-61.

[In the following essay, Wells contends that Thoreau's verse is that of an independent young man, but also notes his myriad influences and asserts that Thoreau's greatest poetic strength was his breadth of vision.]

Eighty-one years after the death of Henry Thoreau has appeared under the careful editorship of Carl Bode the first edition of Thoreau's verse to provide an adequate view of his poetical attainments. The story is, to say the least, unusual. One recalls that eighty years is more than twice the time required to give due appreciation to the lyric art of Emily Dickinson. At last we are able to arrive at a critical estimate of Thoreau's place in American poetry and to speculate upon how much influence his poems, now that they are fairly...

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