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Thoreau
by Charles Ives
He grew in those seasons like corn in the night,
rapt in revery, on the Walden shore,
amidst the sumach, pines and hickories,
in undisturbed solitude.
"Thoreau" is the 48th song in Ives's song collection 114 Songs. The song is preceded by the following quotation from Walden:
...His meditations are interrupted only by the faint sound of the Concord bell. "A melody, as it were, imparted into the wilderness. At a distance over the woods the sound acquires a certain vibratory hum as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept...a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth, interesting to the eyes by the azure tint it imparts."
Ives notes that the song "Thoreau" is "adapted from themes in a Second Pianoforte Sonata."
For more information on Thoreau, please see the following entry in the Artists, Movements and Ideas section: Henry David Thoreau.
Thoreau
by Charles Ives
He grew in those seasons like corn in the night,
rapt in revery, on the Walden shore,
amidst the sumach, pines and hickories,
in undisturbed solitude.