"I Am a Parcel of Vain Strivings Tied" by Henry David Thoreau

I Am a Parcel of Vain Strivings Tied

BY HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

            By a chance bond together,

Dangling this way and that, their links

            Were made so loose and wide,

                                        Methinks,

                     For milder weather.

A bunch of violets without their roots,

            And sorrel intermixed,

Encircled by a wisp of straw

            Once coiled about their shoots,

                                        The law

                     By which I'm fixed.

A nosegay which Time clutched from out

            Those fair Elysian fields,

With weeds and broken stems, in haste,

            Doth make the rabble rout

                                        That waste

                     The day he yields.

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,

            Drinking my juices up,

With no root in the land

            To keep my branches green,

                                        But stand

                     In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem

            In mimicry of life,

But ah! the children will not know,

            Till time has withered them,

                                        The woe

                     With which they're rife.

But now I see I was not plucked for naught,

            And after in life's vase

Of glass set while I might survive,

            But by a kind hand brought

                                        Alive

                     To a strange place.

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,

            And by another year,

Such as God knows, with freer air,

            More fruits and fairer flowers

                                        Will bear,

                     While I droop here.