My life has been the poem
My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.
Henry David Thoreau
My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.
At the heart of these two lines is a quiet, bittersweet confession. Thoreau suggests that his own life, in its truest form, was always meant to be a poem — something crafted, beautiful, and whole. But he couldn’t do both: live it fully and set it down in words.
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