Criticism > Poetry > Thoreau, Henry David - Mary I. Kaiser (essay date 1977)

Thoreau, Henry David - Mary I. Kaiser (essay date 1977)

Mary I. Kaiser (essay date 1977)

SOURCE: “‘'Converging With the Sky'”: The Imagery of Celestial Bodies in Thoreau's Poetry,” in Thoreau Journal Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 3, July 1977, pp. 15-28.

[In the following essay, Kaiser surveys the celestial imagery of Thoreau's poetry and concludes the inconsistencies in his view stems from “unavoidable conflicts” in Thoreau's world.]

Celestial bodies pervade Thoreau's verse as symbols of spiritual facts. Thoreau sees heavenly bodies in a new way; by using a naturalist's careful observation of their peculiarities, he develops the symbolic significance of the heavens beyond the usual Romantic associations: “The sun which I know is not Apollo, nor is the evening star Venus,”1 he writes in the Journal. In Thoreau's hands celestial phenomena become companions of the spirit (“And tread of high-souled men go by, / Their thoughts conversing with the sky,”2)...

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