Criticism > Poetry > Thoreau, Henry David - Mary S. Mattfield (essay date 1970)

Thoreau, Henry David - Mary S. Mattfield (essay date 1970)

Mary S. Mattfield (essay date 1970)

SOURCE: “Thoreau's Poem #189: An Emended Reading,” in The CEA Critic, Vol. 33, No. 1, November 1970, pp. 10-12.

[In the following essay, Mattfield maintains Thoreau could not have intended many of the spellings that appear in his original “Poem #189,” and suggests a revised version of the poem.]

“Poem No. 189”

For though the caves were rabitted,
                                        And the well sweeps were slanted,
Each house seemed not inhabited
                                        But haunted.

The pensive traveler held his way,
                                        Silent & melancholy,
For every man an ideot was,
                                        And every house a...

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