What is the answer to the question Thoreau asked in Chapter 2 about the poem of a shepherd?"There was a shepherd that did live, And held his...

When Henry David Thoreau went into the woods and lived at
Walden Pond, he went into nature in order "to live deliberately" and to see if
he

"could not
learn what it [nature] had to teach, and not, when I came to die discover that I had not
lived."

While in these woods,
Thoreau experiences the majesty and infiniteness of the heavens and ponds that reflect
these heavens.  And, he learns what it is to live freely where
the

winds
which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing
the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of celestial
music.

In contrast to Thoreau
who feels no confinement or restraint and feels that his little
house

was at
an equal remoteness from the life which [he] had left behind dwindled and twinkling with
as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen by my nearest neighbor  only in
moonless nights by him

the
shepherd must remain close to his sheep and his thoughts can rise only as high as his
sheep mount: 

readability="7">

and held his thoughts as
high

As were the mounts whereon his
flocks

Did hourly feed him
by.

Dependent upon some other
force to elevate him, the shepherd is much like the sheep himself as he is led by
another force.  Thoreau, as a Transcendalist found this idea anathema, for he believed
in the importance of individualism and the integrity of the self.  For both Thoreau and
his contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson, self-expression was paramount.  Man should,
according to Thoreau, "march to the beat of a different drummer," not be like the
shepherd, who has lost his humanity and individuality as he merely follows his sheep
even in thought.