True Kindness

by Henry David Thoreau

True Kindness is featured in Thoreau's collection, Poems of Nature (1895). We are impressed with his rhyming selection for "affinity." "Consanguinity" is "blood relation" in Latin; its root "sanguine" means optimistic or positive, a clever double entendre.

True kindness is a pure divine affinity,
Not founded upon human consanguinity.
It is a spirit, not a blood relation,
Superior to family and station.

You may also enjoy our collection of Nature Poems.

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Return to the Henry David Thoreau library , or . . . Read the next poem; What's the Railroad to Me?