Failed romance

In 1839, Thoreau's first love interest (maybe) was Ellen Devereux Sewell. Unfortunately I know the relationship was ultimately doomed, but the forever narrative takes away from the time spent together. Ellen and Henry went to see a Giraffe together, of all things. The spent 2 weeks hanging out. They would spend some time together later too.

John, Henry's older brother, ask her to marry him, in person on the beach. She even said yes. A young lady, when she told her mother and father, they were not pleased and they backed out. She also thought maybe she liked Henry more. 

Henry would ask her to marry him by letter, not knowing about his brother's proposal. Her father would not consent, her father was a Unitarian minister, and they were Transcendentals. Imagine that being a thing that disqualified a man of being marriageable. She wrote back immediately to say no. 

It was when she was 20 years old when she said yes to marriage and meant it. She married John Osgood, a unitarian minister from the town over. 

Henry would never propose marriage again in his life. He would be friends to the married couple, and Ellen would treasure the poems he wrote for her brother, her and his books.

I find myself washed up as an unwanted single at my advanced age, and I'm OK with that if my friend Henry suffered through the same things. I know down the line he would also have intense friendships with Emerson's wife, being a sort of stand in husband when Emerson went on his lecture tours. In the absence of a great romantic love, Thoreau was a great brother, son, neighbor, teacher, writer and friend.

Thoreau's poem Sympathy is considered to be the lasting impression we have of this early attempt at a relationship, but it's about Ellen's younger brother Edmund. To me the poem speaks to meeting other people and appreciating them, perhaps seeing a nobility in youth. Positive regard, see the noble in people. I can't help but think of Anne of Green Gables (1908), who was all about meeting kindred spirits. This poem was the first submission to the new journal of Transcendentalism, called The Dial, with Margaret Fuller as the editor.

Sympathy

Lately alas I knew a gentle boy,

Whose features all were cast in Virtue's mould,

As one she had designed for Beauty's toy,

But after manned him for her own strong-hold.

On every side he open was as day,

That you might see no lack of strength within,

For walls and ports do only serve alway

For a pretence to feebleness and sin.

Say not that Cćsar was victorious,

With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame;

In other sense this youth was glorious,

Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came.

No strength went out to get him victory,

When all was income of its own accord;

For where he went none other was to see,

But all were parcel of their noble lord.

He forayed like the subtle breeze of summer,

That stilly shows fresh landscapes to the eyes,

And revolutions worked without a murmur,

Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies.

So was I taken unawares by this,

I quite forgot my homage to confess;

Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is,

I might have loved him, had I loved him less.

Each moment, as we nearer drew to each,

A stern respect withheld us farther yet,

So that we seemed beyond each other's reach,

And less acquainted than when first we met.

We two were one while we did sympathize,

So could we not the simplest bargain drive;

And what avails it now that we are wise,

If absence doth this doubleness contrive?

Eternity may not the chance repeat,

But I must tread my single way alone,

In sad remembrance that we once did meet,

And know that bliss irrevocably gone.

The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing,

For elegy has other subject none;

Each strain of music in my ears shall ring

Knell of departure from that other one.

Make haste and celebrate my tragedy;

With fitting strain resound ye woods and fields;

Sorrow is dearer in such case to me

Than all the joys other occasion yields.

Is't then too late the damage to repair?

Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft

The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,

But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.

If I but love that virtue which he is,

Though it be scented in the morning air,

Still shall we be truest acquaintances,

Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare.

This perhaps is the poem about his first (maybe) love:

My Love Must Be As Free by Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

My love must be as free 

    As is the eagle's wing, 

Hovering o'er land and sea 

    And everything 

I must not dim my eye 

    In thy saloon, 

I must not leave my sky 

    And nightly moon 

Be not the fowler's net 

    Which stays my flight, 

And craftily is set 

    T' allure the sight

But be the favoring gale 

    That bears me on, 

And still doth fill my sail 

    When thou art gone 

I cannot leave my sky 

    For thy caprice, 

True love would soar as high 

    As heaven is 

The eagle would not brook 

    Her mate thus won, 

Who trained his eye to look 

    Beneath the sun

The final poem of this early phase:

Friendship

I think awhile of Love, and while I think,

Love is to me a world,

Sole meat and sweetest drink,

And close connecting link

Tween heaven and earth.

I only know it is, not how or why,

My greatest happiness;

However hard I try,

Not if I were to die,

Can I explain.

I fain would ask my friend how it can be,

But when the time arrives,

Then Love is more lovely

Than anything to me,

And so I'm dumb.

For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak,

But only thinks and does;

Though surely out 'twill leak

Without the help of Greek,

Or any tongue.

A man may love the truth and practise it,

Beauty he may admire,

And goodness not omit,

As much as may befit

To reverence.

But only when these three together meet,

As they always incline,

And make one soul the seat,

And favorite retreat,

Of loveliness;

When under kindred shape, like loves and hates

And a kindred nature,

Proclaim us to be mates,

Exposed to equal fates

Eternally;

And each may other help, and service do,

Drawing Love's bands more tight,

Service he ne'er shall rue

While one and one make two,

And two are one;

In such case only doth man fully prove

Fully as man can do,

What power there is in Love

His inmost soul to move

Resistlessly.