Explore "The Fisher's Boy" by Henry David Thoreau on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
My life is like a stroll upon the beach, / As near the ocean's edge as I can go;
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'erreach, / Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.
My sole employment 'tis, and scrupulous care, / To place my gains beyond the reach of tides, / Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare, / Which Ocean kindly to my hand confides.
I have but few companions on the shore:
They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea;
Yet oft I think the ocean they've sailed o'er / Is deeper known upon the strand to me.
The middle sea contains no crimson dulse, / Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view;
Along the shore my hand is on its pulse, / And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew.