Walking- William and Thoreau hand in hand :-)

A month after his death from Tuberculosis in May 1862, The magazine entitled The Atlantic published one of his most famous essays "Walking" which praised the virtues of immersing oneself in nature and lamented the inevitable encroachment of private ownership upon the wilderness.
*As William Wordsworth tried to use the language of 'the common people" -Thoreau used the language of the'common people'- no forms or mechanics of'poetry', as if he was talking to you.
*I think this essay touched on the idea of what Blake calls "poetic genuis" or the same idea that William Wordsworth was trying to get across, that not everyone can be a "walker"- poetry comes from someone who has a gift: not everyone can be a poet or philosopher.Thoreau says in Walking that "it requires a dispensation from Heaven to a walker.You must be born into the family of the Walkers".
*Thoreau says:"The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called...but it is the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life...When a traveller asked Wordsworth's servent to show him her master's study she answered,"Here is his library, but his study is out of doors"...
I believe this is comparable to William Wordsworths:"The feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and the situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling" (Preface to lyrical Ballads pg 599). *As William Worsworth says that the city disconnects on from the natural- blunts ones mind it appears that Thoreau agrees: "There are square miles in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see civilization and the abodes of man afar...man and his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture, even politics, the most alarming of them all- I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape".
*Thoreau continues with "when fences shall be multiplied and mantraps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God's earth shall be contrued to mean tresspassing on some gentleman's grounds". This reminds me of the Perlude book twelve how Wordsworth says that he loves a public road but contrasting it with public meaing natural, common to all, not owned by the state.

Walking
Henry David thoreau
The Atlantic Monthly;May 2006;297,4;CBCA Reference pg 54
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