Thoreau writes in his journal:
Though the pleasure of ascending the mountain is largely mixed with awe, my thoughts are purified and sublimed by it, as if I had been translated.
I see that men may be well-mannered or conventionally polite toward men, but skeptical toward God.
Eastward a mount ascends;
But when in the sunbeam its hard outline is sought,
It all dissolves and ends.
The woods that way are gates, the pastures too slope up
To an unearthly ground;
But when I ask my mates to take the staff and cup,
It can no more be found.
Perhaps I have no shoes fit for the lofty soil
Where my thoughts graze,
No properly spun clues, nor well-strained mid-day oil,
Or must I mend my ways?
It is a promised land which I have not yet earned.
I have not made beginning
With consecrated hand, nor have I ever learned
To lay the underpinning.
The mountain sinks by day, as do my lofty thoughts,
Because I’m not high-minded.
If I could think alway above these hills and warts,
I should see it, though blinded.
It is a spiral path within the pilgrim’s soul
Leads to this mountain’s brow;
Commencing at his hearth he climbs up to this goal
He knows not when nor how.
We see mankind generally either (from ignorance or avarice) toiling too hard and becoming mere machines in order to acquire wealth . . .
