Read "Poverty. a Fragment" by Henry David Thoreau online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
If I am poor, / It is that I am proud;
If God has made me naked and a boor, / He did not think it fit his work to shroud.
The poor man comes direct from heaven to earth, / As stars drop down the sky, and tropic beams;
The rich receives in our gross air his birth, / As from low suns are slanted golden gleams.
Yon sun is naked, bare of satellite, / Unless our earth and moon that office hold;
Though his perpetual day feareth no night, / And his perennial summer dreads no cold.
Mankind may delve, but cannot my wealth spend;
If I no partial wealth appropriate, / No armèd ships unto the Indies send, / None robs me of my Orient estate.