Saturday, July 4, 2026

When to be an American

 I’ve already had enough of the 250th anniversary. I’m pretty sure that if Henry David Thoreau were still with us, he’d have had his fill too. I’ve quoted this line before:

I would remind my countrymen, that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.

 

• Source: The Quotable Thoreau, edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 389. It’s a line from the essay “Slavery in Massachusetts.”
at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

How do you know a poet?

 What does it mean to  know  a poet? Does it count if you could write a letter off the top of your head introducing a friend to the poet’s w...

  • Alice Oswald's poem on battle
     An appropriate read for Memorial Day? How about Alice Oswald’s long poem  Memorial , which recounts how soldiers in the  Iliad  met their e...
  • Lang: 'Letters to Dead Authors'
      Andrew Lang, a Scottish polymath who lived from 1844 to 1912, wrote   Letters to Dead Authors . I like the idea of the book, rather than t...
  • The things you hear
      Some days you go into the woods and see all kinds of things. Some days you don’t. And then there are days when you don’t see but   hear . ...