"Remarks After the Hanging of John Brown" was a speech given byHenry David Thoreau on December 2, 1859, the day ofJohn Brown's execution. Thoreau gave a few brief remarks of his own, read poetry bySir Walter Raleigh ("The Soul's Errand"),William Collins ("How Sleep the Brave"),Friedrich Schiller (excerpts fromSamuel Taylor Coleridge's translation of "The Death of Wallenstein"),William Wordsworth (excerpts from "Alas! What boots the long laborious quest"),Alfred Tennyson (excerpts from "Maud"),George Chapman (excerpts from "Conspirary of Charles, Duke of Byron"), andHenry Wotton ("The Character of a Happy Life"), and then quoted from his own translation ofTacitus.[1]