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This increase of reputation is no doubt due, in some degree, to the "return to nature," which has recently been so prominent in American life and which has gained a wide hearing for so noteworthy a "poet-naturalist"; but it is also due in part to a growing recognition of the fact that as a writer of delightful, suggestive and inspiring prose he has had few equals.
To some readers he is primarily a naturalist, an observer, of the White of Selborne school; to others an elemental man, a lover of the wild, a hermit of the woods. He has been called the poet-naturalist, to indicate that his powers of observation were accompanied, like Wordsworth's, by a gift of emotional interpretation of the meaning of phenomena.
He knew the flora and fauna of Concord as well as his friend the poet-naturalist. He had a large experience of the world, had run a ranch in New Mexico and an orange plantation in Sicily.
Pike has obliged us with a book of admirable temper, inexhaustible research and fine manly spirit: we could wish for our own sakes nothing better than that all our sub-tropical and tropical consulships were filled by his brothers, and that they would all make volumes out of their experiences. Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist. By William Ellery Ghanning. Boston: Roberts Bros. Mr.
Then gently touching the golden petals, he asked: "Where did you get the odd name 'eschscholtzia' for this lovely flower?" "It was given by the French-born poet-naturalist, Chamisso, in honor of the German botanist, Dr. Eschscholz, who came together to San Francisco on a Russian ship in 1816.
Thoreau was a poet-naturalist, and the lesson he taught us is that this is the most beautiful world to know anything about, and there are enough curious and wonderful things right under our feet, and over our heads, and all around us, to amuse, divert, interest and instruct us for a lifetime. We need only a little. Use your eyes!
In W.E. Channing's book about Thoreau as the "Poet-Naturalist," there is a passage from his journal in which Thoreau speaks of Hosmer as the last of the farmers worthy of mention. "Human life may be transitory and full of trouble," he says, "but the perennial mind whose survey extends from that spring to this from Columella to Hosmer is superior to change.
Our poet-naturalist seems to have appropriated all outdoors for his stamping-ground. Our essayist is thus seen not to be untraveled, yet he is no wanderer. No man ever had the home feeling stronger than has he; none is more completely under the spell of a dear and familiar locality.
In quiet converse passed the hours of that memorable day in the humble retreat on the wooded hills, "Far from the clank of the world," and in the company of the poet-naturalist. So cordial had my host been, so gracious the admission to his home and hospitality, that I left the little refuge with a feeling of enrichment I shall cherish while life lasts.
He was a poet-naturalist, as his friend Channing aptly called him, of untiring industry, and the country in a radius of seven or eight miles about Concord was threaded by him in all seasons as probably no other section of New England was ever threaded and scrutinized by any one man.
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