Thoreau

7 Pages 1654 Words

f healing herbs to just men's fields!

Here Thoreau depicts the “low-anchored cloud,” or the fog as a nurturer for the natural world; the “drifting meadow” of air nourishes nourishes and sustains the animals and flowers below.
Described in terms of the countryside, the “low-anchored cloud” has several connotations. First, as the source of rivers, it gives rain to the streams. The phrases “dew-cloth” and “dream drapery” represent a veil-like effect of the cloud: the cloud is transparent to see through but is too opaque to see anything clearly. The last three lines, the fog is described as a “Spirit” whose perfumes and herbs heal the fields of “just,” or righteous men. The shift from visual imagery to olfactory imagery presents the sense of smell as less restricted by the physical world; the visual and tactile senses depend on the presence of tangible objects, whereas smell does not.
Like “Mist,” Thoreau uses the same rhetoric and figurative language in his poem “Fog” attaching temporal and divine characteristics with the fog image to present the connection the natural world with the metaphysical:
Dull water spirit—and Protean ...