Henry Thoreau Inspiration Essay

Henry Thoreau’s poem “Inspiration” is perhaps obviously at least somewhat about inspiration. Beyond the surface level of talking about inspiration though, there’s the first stanza that alludes to a deeper meaning; “Whate'er we leave to God, God does, and blesses us; The work we choose should be our own, God leaves alone” (Thoreau). The theme behind this is that man can choose to work with the inspiration of God or work as a man having his own ability to create. That said part of this poem is also about the tension between human independence and inspiration from on high. As utilizing divine inspiration causes there to be a quality of the work that goes beyond what the author intended or was able to foresee. There is also an anxiousness behind

Inspiration is both directly and indirectly at times referred to multiple times. Perhaps this is due to the title being an unwieldy word to repeat when trying to create a musically appealing poem with the ABAB rhyme style and not wanting to get bogged down with the word inspiration. To some extent this pair of lines via rhyme also links the concepts in a similar style. For example, in “Inspiration” the lines “I will not doubt the love untold… Which wooed me young, and woos me old,” together tie the concept of love and wooing in the first and third lines. In the poem inspiration comes from both Godly and from man himself. As quoted earlier however the two are kept separate with God opting not interfere with work that human hands have begun themselves. However, Thoreau feels that creative works that come from his own pool of thoughts are as “weak and shallow as it’s source”. Thoreau also feels though that works that comes from God while stronger, are something to be anxious about using. Part of this perhaps, comes from Thoreau’s line “Time Cannot bend the line which God hath writ.”. This idea that working with Godly inspiration should result in something that is timeless works against Thoreau’s independence significantly so as he would want the works that he was best known for to be his own. His fierce independence is noted by Harmon et al “Having built his own cabin, Thoreau moved in on July 4, 1845—a date deliberately chosen to celebrate his own "independence"—and stayed for a little over two years, returning to town in the fall of 1847”. This desire to be independent of the world extends to his desire to be independent elsewhere. Thoreau then examines his senses and compares what it is like to be working off of humanly though and Godly inspiration. For example, Thoreau views his senses as being almost nonexistent compared to this divine inspiration.