Rsn5DYfF

1Success is counted sweetest
2By those who ne'er succeed.
3To comprehend a nectar
4Requires sorest need.
5Not one of all the purple host
6Who took the flag to-day
7Can tell the definition,
8So clear, of victory,
9As he, defeated, dying,
10On whose forbidden ear
11The distant strains of triumph
12Break, agonized and clear!
13Our share of night to bear,
14Our share of morning,
15Our blank in bliss to fill,
16Our blank in scorning.
17Here a star, and there a star,
18Some lose their way.
19Here a mist, and there a mist,
20Afterwards -- day!
21Soul, wilt thou toss again?
22By just such a hazard
23Hundreds have lost, indeed,
24But tens have won an all.
25Angels' breathless ballot
26Lingers to record thee;
27Imps in eager caucus
28Raffle for my soul.
29'T is so much joy! 'T is so much joy!
30If I should fail, what poverty!
31And yet, as poor as I
32Have ventured all upon a throw;
33Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so
34This side the victory!
35Life is but life, and death but death!
36Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!
37And if, indeed, I fail,
38At least to know the worst is sweet.
39Defeat means nothing but defeat,
40No drearier can prevail!
41And if I gain, -- oh, gun at sea,
42Oh, bells that in the steeples be,
43At first repeat it slow!
44For heaven is a different thing
45Conjectured, and waked sudden in,
46And might o'erwhelm me so!
47Glee! The great storm is over!
48Four have recovered the land;
49Forty gone down together
50Into the boiling sand.
51Ring, for the scant salvation!
52Toll, for the bonnie souls, --
53Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
54Spinning upon the shoals!
55How they will tell the shipwreck
56When winter shakes the door,
57Till the children ask, "But the forty?
58Did they come back no more?"
59Then a silence suffuses the story,
60And a softness the teller's eye;
61And the children no further question,
62And only the waves reply.
63If I can stop one heart from breaking,
64I shall not live in vain;
65If I can ease one life the aching,
66Or cool one pain,
67Or help one fainting robin
68Unto his nest again,
69I shall not live in vain.
70Within my reach!
71I could have touched!
72I might have chanced that way!
73Soft sauntered through the village,
74Sauntered as soft away!
75So unsuspected violets
76Within the fields lie low,
77Too late for striving fingers
78That passed, an hour ago.
79A wounded deer leaps highest,
80I've heard the hunter tell;
81'T is but the ecstasy of death,
82And then the brake is still.
83The smitten rock that gushes,
84The trampled steel that springs;
85A cheek is always redder
86Just where the hectic stings!
87Mirth is the mail of anguish,
88In which it cautions arm,
89Lest anybody spy the blood
90And "You're hurt" exclaim!
91The heart asks pleasure first,
92And then, excuse from pain;
93And then, those little anodynes
94That deaden suffering;
95And then, to go to sleep;
96And then, if it should be
97The will of its Inquisitor,
98The liberty to die.
99A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
100To meet an antique book,
101In just the dress his century wore;
102A privilege, I think,
103His venerable hand to take,
104And warming in our own,
105A passage back, or two, to make
106To times when he was young.
107His quaint opinions to inspect,
108His knowledge to unfold
109On what concerns our mutual mind,
110The literature of old;
111What interested scholars most,
112What competitions ran
113When Plato was a certainty.
114And Sophocles a man;
115When Sappho was a living girl,
116And Beatrice wore
117The gown that Dante deified.
118Facts, centuries before,
119He traverses familiar,
120As one should come to town
121And tell you all your dreams were true;
122He lived where dreams were sown.
123His presence is enchantment,
124You beg him not to go;
125Old volumes shake their vellum heads
126And tantalize, just so.
127Much madness is divinest sense
128To a discerning eye;
129Much sense the starkest madness.
130'T is the majority
131In this, as all, prevails.
132Assent, and you are sane;
133Demur, -- you're straightway dangerous,
134And handled with a chain.
135I asked no other thing,
136No other was denied.
137I offered Being for it;
138The mighty merchant smiled.
139Brazil? He twirled a button,
140Without a glance my way:
141"But, madam, is there nothing else
142That we can show to-day?"
143The soul selects her own society,
144Then shuts the door;
145On her divine majority
146Obtrude no more.
147Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
148At her low gate;
149Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
150Upon her mat.
151I've known her from an ample nation
152Choose one;
153Then close the valves of her attention
154Like stone.
155Some things that fly there be, --
156Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:
157Of these no elegy.
158Some things that stay there be, --
159Grief, hills, eternity:
160Nor this behooveth me.
161There are, that resting, rise.
162Can I expound the skies?
163How still the riddle lies!
164I know some lonely houses off the road
165A robber 'd like the look of, --
166Wooden barred,
167And windows hanging low,
168Inviting to
169A portico,
170Where two could creep:
171One hand the tools,
172The other peep
173To make sure all's asleep.
174Old-fashioned eyes,
175Not easy to surprise!
176How orderly the kitchen 'd look by night,
177With just a clock, --
178But they could gag the tick,
179And mice won't bark;
180And so the walls don't tell,
181None will.
182A pair of spectacles ajar just stir --
183An almanac's aware.
184Was it the mat winked,
185Or a nervous star?
186The moon slides down the stair
187To see who's there.
188There's plunder, -- where?
189Tankard, or spoon,
190Earring, or stone,
191A watch, some ancient brooch
192To match the grandmamma,
193Staid sleeping there.
194Day rattles, too,
195Stealth's slow;
196The sun has got as far
197As the third sycamore.
198Screams chanticleer,
199"Who's there?"
200And echoes, trains away,
201Sneer -- "Where?"
202While the old couple, just astir,
203Fancy the sunrise left the door ajar!
204To fight aloud is very brave,
205But gallanter, I know,
206Who charge within the bosom,
207The cavalry of woe.
208Who win, and nations do not see,
209Who fall, and none observe,
210Whose dying eyes no country
211Regards with patriot love.
212We trust, in plumed procession,
213For such the angels go,
214Rank after rank, with even feet
215And uniforms of snow.
216When night is almost done,
217And sunrise grows so near
218That we can touch the spaces,
219It 's time to smooth the hair
220And get the dimples ready,
221And wonder we could care
222For that old faded midnight
223That frightened but an hour.
224Read, sweet, how others strove,
225Till we are stouter;
226What they renounced,
227Till we are less afraid;
228How many times they bore
229The faithful witness,
230Till we are helped,
231As if a kingdom cared!
232Read then of faith
233That shone above the fagot;
234Clear strains of hymn
235The river could not drown;
236Brave names of men
237And celestial women,
238Passed out of record
239Into renown!
240Pain has an element of blank;
241It cannot recollect
242When it began, or if there were
243A day when it was not.
244It has no future but itself,
245Its infinite realms contain
246Its past, enlightened to perceive
247New periods of pain.
248I taste a liquor never brewed,
249From tankards scooped in pearl;
250Not all the vats upon the Rhine
251Yield such an alcohol!
252Inebriate of air am I,
253And debauchee of dew,
254Reeling, through endless summer days,
255From inns of molten blue.
256When landlords turn the drunken bee
257Out of the foxglove's door,
258When butterflies renounce their drams,
259I shall but drink the more!
260Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
261And saints to windows run,
262To see the little tippler
263Leaning against the sun!
264He ate and drank the precious words,
265His spirit grew robust;
266He knew no more that he was poor,
267Nor that his frame was dust.
268He danced along the dingy days,
269And this bequest of wings
270Was but a book. What liberty
271A loosened spirit brings!
272I had no time to hate, because
273The grave would hinder me,
274And life was not so ample I
275Could finish enmity.
276Nor had I time to love; but since
277Some industry must be,
278The little toil of love, I thought,
279Was large enough for me.
280'T was such a little, little boat
281That toddled down the bay!
282'T was such a gallant, gallant sea
283That beckoned it away!
284'T was such a greedy, greedy wave
285That licked it from the coast;
286Nor ever guessed the stately sails
287My little craft was lost!
288Whether my bark went down at sea,
289Whether she met with gales,
290Whether to isles enchanted
291She bent her docile sails;
292By what mystic mooring
293She is held to-day, --
294This is the errand of the eye
295Out upon the bay.
296Belshazzar had a letter, --
297He never had but one;
298Belshazzar's correspondent
299Concluded and begun
300In that immortal copy
301The conscience of us all
302Can read without its glasses
303On revelation's wall.
304The brain within its groove
305Runs evenly and true;
306But let a splinter swerve,
307'T were easier for you
308To put the water back
309When floods have slit the hills,
310And scooped a turnpike for themselves,
311And blotted out the mills!
312Mine by the right of the white election!
313Mine by the royal seal!
314Mine by the sign in the scarlet prison
315Bars cannot conceal!
316Mine, here in vision and in veto!
317Mine, by the grave's repeal
318Titled, confirmed, -- delirious charter!
319Mine, while the ages steal!
320You left me, sweet, two legacies, --
321A legacy of love
322A Heavenly Father would content,
323Had He the offer of;
324You left me boundaries of pain
325Capacious as the sea,
326Between eternity and time,
327Your consciousness and me.
328Alter? When the hills do.
329Falter? When the sun
330Question if his glory
331Be the perfect one.
332Surfeit? When the daffodil
333Doth of the dew:
334Even as herself, O friend!
335I will of you!
336Elysium is as far as to
337The very nearest room,
338If in that room a friend await
339Felicity or doom.
340What fortitude the soul contains,
341That it can so endure
342The accent of a coming foot,
343The opening of a door!
344Doubt me, my dim companion!
345Why, God would be content
346With but a fraction of the love
347Poured thee without a stint.
348The whole of me, forever,
349What more the woman can, --
350Say quick, that I may dower thee
351With last delight I own!
352It cannot be my spirit,
353For that was thine before;
354I ceded all of dust I knew, --
355What opulence the more
356Had I, a humble maiden,
357Whose farthest of degree
358Was that she might,
359Some distant heaven,
360Dwell timidly with thee!
361If you were coming in the fall,
362I'd brush the summer by
363With half a smile and half a spurn,
364As housewives do a fly.
365If I could see you in a year,
366I'd wind the months in balls,
367And put them each in separate drawers,
368Until their time befalls.
369If only centuries delayed,
370I'd count them on my hand,
371Subtracting till my fingers dropped
372Into Van Diemen's land.
373If certain, when this life was out,
374That yours and mine should be,
375I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
376And taste eternity.
377But now, all ignorant of the length
378Of time's uncertain wing,
379It goads me, like the goblin bee,
380That will not state its sting.
381I hide myself within my flower,
382That wearing on your breast,
383You, unsuspecting, wear me too --
384And angels know the rest.
385I hide myself within my flower,
386That, fading from your vase,
387You, unsuspecting, feel for me
388Almost a loneliness.
389That I did always love,
390I bring thee proof:
391That till I loved
392I did not love enough.
393That I shall love alway,
394I offer thee
395That love is life,
396And life hath immortality.
397This, dost thou doubt, sweet?
398Then have I
399Nothing to show
400But Calvary.
401Have you got a brook in your little heart,
402Where bashful flowers blow,
403And blushing birds go down to drink,
404And shadows tremble so?
405And nobody knows, so still it flows,
406That any brook is there;
407And yet your little draught of life
408Is daily drunken there.
409Then look out for the little brook in March,
410When the rivers overflow,
411And the snows come hurrying from the hills,
412And the bridges often go.
413And later, in August it may be,
414When the meadows parching lie,
415Beware, lest this little brook of life
416Some burning noon go dry!
417As if some little Arctic flower,
418Upon the polar hem,
419Went wandering down the latitudes,
420Until it puzzled came
421To continents of summer,
422To firmaments of sun,
423To strange, bright crowds of flowers,
424And birds of foreign tongue!
425I say, as if this little flower
426To Eden wandered in --
427What then? Why, nothing, only,
428Your inference therefrom!
429My river runs to thee:
430Blue sea, wilt welcome me?
431My river waits reply.
432Oh sea, look graciously!
433I'll fetch thee brooks
434From spotted nooks, --
435Say, sea,
436Take me!
437I cannot live with you,
438It would be life,
439And life is over there
440Behind the shelf
441The sexton keeps the key to,
442Putting up
443Our life, his porcelain,
444Like a cup
445Discarded of the housewife,
446Quaint or broken;
447A newer Sevres pleases,
448Old ones crack.
449I could not die with you,
450For one must wait
451To shut the other's gaze down, --
452You could not.
453And I, could I stand by
454And see you freeze,
455Without my right of frost,
456Death's privilege?
457Nor could I rise with you,
458Because your face
459Would put out Jesus',
460That new grace
461Glow plain and foreign
462On my homesick eye,
463Except that you, than he
464Shone closer by.
465They'd judge us -- how?
466For you served Heaven, you know,
467Or sought to;
468I could not,
469Because you saturated sight,
470And I had no more eyes
471For sordid excellence
472As Paradise.
473And were you lost, I would be,
474Though my name
475Rang loudest
476On the heavenly fame.
477And were you saved,
478And I condemned to be
479Where you were not,
480That self were hell to me.
481So we must keep apart,
482You there, I here,
483With just the door ajar
484That oceans are,
485And prayer,
486And that pale sustenance,
487Despair!
488There came a day at summer's full
489Entirely for me;
490I thought that such were for the saints,
491Where revelations be.
492The sun, as common, went abroad,
493The flowers, accustomed, blew,
494As if no soul the solstice passed
495That maketh all things new.
496The time was scarce profaned by speech;
497The symbol of a word
498Was needless, as at sacrament
499The wardrobe of our Lord.
500Each was to each the sealed church,
501Permitted to commune this time,
502Lest we too awkward show
503At supper of the Lamb.
504The hours slid fast, as hours will,
505Clutched tight by greedy hands;
506So faces on two decks look back,
507Bound to opposing lands.
508And so, when all the time had failed,
509Without external sound,
510Each bound the other's crucifix,
511We gave no other bond.
512Sufficient troth that we shall rise --
513Deposed, at length, the grave --
514To that new marriage, justified
515Through Calvaries of Love!
516I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs;
517The name they dropped upon my face
518With water, in the country church,
519Is finished using now,
520And they can put it with my dolls,
521My childhood, and the string of spools
522I've finished threading too.
523Baptized before without the choice,
524But this time consciously, of grace
525Unto supremest name,
526Called to my full, the crescent dropped,
527Existence's whole arc filled up
528With one small diadem.
529My second rank, too small the first,
530Crowned, crowing on my father's breast,
531A half unconscious queen;
532But this time, adequate, erect,
533With will to choose or to reject.
534And I choose -- just a throne.
535'T was a long parting, but the time
536For interview had come;
537Before the judgment-seat of God,
538The last and second time
539These fleshless lovers met,
540A heaven in a gaze,
541A heaven of heavens, the privilege
542Of one another's eyes.
543No lifetime set on them,
544Apparelled as the new
545Unborn, except they had beheld,
546Born everlasting now.
547Was bridal e'er like this?
548A paradise, the host,
549And cherubim and seraphim
550The most familiar guest.
551I'm wife; I've finished that,
552That other state;
553I'm Czar, I'm woman now:
554It's safer so.
555How odd the girl's life looks
556Behind this soft eclipse!
557I think that earth seems so
558To those in heaven now.
559This being comfort, then
560That other kind was pain;
561But why compare?
562I'm wife! stop there!
563She rose to his requirement, dropped
564The playthings of her life
565To take the honorable work
566Of woman and of wife.
567If aught she missed in her new day
568Of amplitude, or awe,
569Or first prospective, or the gold
570In using wore away,
571It lay unmentioned, as the sea
572Develops pearl and weed,
573But only to himself is known
574The fathoms they abide.
575Come slowly, Eden!
576Lips unused to thee,
577Bashful, sip thy jasmines,
578As the fainting bee,
579Reaching late his flower,
580Round her chamber hums,
581Counts his nectars -- enters,
582And is lost in balms!
583New feet within my garden go,
584New fingers stir the sod;
585A troubadour upon the elm
586Betrays the solitude.
587New children play upon the green,
588New weary sleep below;
589And still the pensive spring returns,
590And still the punctual snow!
591Pink, small, and punctual,
592Aromatic, low,
593Covert in April,
594Candid in May,
595Dear to the moss,
596Known by the knoll,
597Next to the robin
598In every human soul.
599Bold little beauty,
600Bedecked with thee,
601Nature forswears
602Antiquity.
603The murmur of a bee
604A witchcraft yieldeth me.
605If any ask me why,
606'T were easier to die
607Than tell.
608The red upon the hill
609Taketh away my will;
610If anybody sneer,
611Take care, for God is here,
612That's all.
613The breaking of the day
614Addeth to my degree;
615If any ask me how,
616Artist, who drew me so,
617Must tell!
618Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower?
619But I could never sell.
620If you would like to borrow
621Until the daffodil
622Unties her yellow bonnet
623Beneath the village door,
624Until the bees, from clover rows
625Their hock and sherry draw,
626Why, I will lend until just then,
627But not an hour more!
628The pedigree of honey
629Does not concern the bee;
630A clover, any time, to him
631Is aristocracy.
632Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
633I keep it staying at home,
634With a bobolink for a chorister,
635And an orchard for a dome.
636Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
637I just wear my wings,
638And instead of tolling the bell for church,
639Our little sexton sings.
640God preaches, -- a noted clergyman, --
641And the sermon is never long;
642So instead of getting to heaven at last,
643I'm going all along!
644The bee is not afraid of me,
645I know the butterfly;
646The pretty people in the woods
647Receive me cordially.
648The brooks laugh louder when I come,
649The breezes madder play.
650Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists?
651Wherefore, O summer's day?
652Some rainbow coming from the fair!
653Some vision of the world Cashmere
654I confidently see!
655Or else a peacock's purple train,
656Feather by feather, on the plain
657Fritters itself away!
658The dreamy butterflies bestir,
659Lethargic pools resume the whir
660Of last year's sundered tune.
661From some old fortress on the sun
662Baronial bees march, one by one,
663In murmuring platoon!
664The robins stand as thick to-day
665As flakes of snow stood yesterday,
666On fence and roof and twig.
667The orchis binds her feather on
668For her old lover, Don the Sun,
669Revisiting the bog!
670Without commander, countless, still,
671The regiment of wood and hill
672In bright detachment stand.
673Behold! Whose multitudes are these?
674The children of whose turbaned seas,
675Or what Circassian land?
676The grass so little has to do, --
677A sphere of simple green,
678With only butterflies to brood,
679And bees to entertain,
680And stir all day to pretty tunes
681The breezes fetch along,
682And hold the sunshine in its lap
683And bow to everything;
684And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
685And make itself so fine, --
686A duchess were too common
687For such a noticing.
688And even when it dies, to pass
689In odors so divine,
690As lowly spices gone to sleep,
691Or amulets of pine.
692And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
693And dream the days away, --
694The grass so little has to do,
695I wish I were the hay!
696A little road not made of man,
697Enabled of the eye,
698Accessible to thill of bee,
699Or cart of butterfly.
700If town it have, beyond itself,
701'T is that I cannot say;
702I only sigh, -- no vehicle
703Bears me along that way.
704A drop fell on the apple tree,
705Another on the roof;
706A half a dozen kissed the eaves,
707And made the gables laugh.
708A few went out to help the brook,
709That went to help the sea.
710Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,
711What necklaces could be!
712The dust replaced in hoisted roads,
713The birds jocoser sung;
714The sunshine threw his hat away,
715The orchards spangles hung.
716The breezes brought dejected lutes,
717And bathed them in the glee;
718The East put out a single flag,
719And signed the fete away.
720A something in a summer's day,
721As slow her flambeaux burn away,
722Which solemnizes me.
723A something in a summer's noon, --
724An azure depth, a wordless tune,
725Transcending ecstasy.
726And still within a summer's night
727A something so transporting bright,
728I clap my hands to see;
729Then veil my too inspecting face,
730Lest such a subtle, shimmering grace
731Flutter too far for me.
732The wizard-fingers never rest,
733The purple brook within the breast
734Still chafes its narrow bed;
735Still rears the East her amber flag,
736Guides still the sun along the crag
737His caravan of red,
738Like flowers that heard the tale of dews,
739But never deemed the dripping prize
740Awaited their low brows;
741Or bees, that thought the summer's name
742Some rumor of delirium
743No summer could for them;
744Or Arctic creature, dimly stirred
745By tropic hint, -- some travelled bird
746Imported to the wood;
747Or wind's bright signal to the ear,
748Making that homely and severe,
749Contented, known, before
750The heaven unexpected came,
751To lives that thought their worshipping
752A too presumptuous psalm.
753This is the land the sunset washes,
754These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;
755Where it rose, or whither it rushes,
756These are the western mystery!
757Night after night her purple traffic
758Strews the landing with opal bales;
759Merchantmen poise upon horizons,
760Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.
761There is a flower that bees prefer,
762And butterflies desire;
763To gain the purple democrat
764The humming-birds aspire.
765And whatsoever insect pass,
766A honey bears away
767Proportioned to his several dearth
768And her capacity.
769Her face is rounder than the moon,
770And ruddier than the gown
771Of orchis in the pasture,
772Or rhododendron worn.
773She doth not wait for June;
774Before the world is green
775Her sturdy little countenance
776Against the wind is seen,
777Contending with the grass,
778Near kinsman to herself,
779For privilege of sod and sun,
780Sweet litigants for life.
781And when the hills are full,
782And newer fashions blow,
783Doth not retract a single spice
784For pang of jealousy.
785Her public is the noon,
786Her providence the sun,
787Her progress by the bee proclaimed
788In sovereign, swerveless tune.
789The bravest of the host,
790Surrendering the last,
791Nor even of defeat aware
792When cancelled by the frost.
793Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
794I hear the level bee:
795A jar across the flowers goes,
796Their velvet masonry
797Withstands until the sweet assault
798Their chivalry consumes,
799While he, victorious, tilts away
800To vanquish other blooms.
801His feet are shod with gauze,
802His helmet is of gold;
803His breast, a single onyx
804With chrysoprase, inlaid.
805His labor is a chant,
806His idleness a tune;
807Oh, for a bee's experience
808Of clovers and of noon!
809Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
810Indicative that suns go down;
811The notice to the startled grass
812That darkness is about to pass.
813As children bid the guest good-night,
814And then reluctant turn,
815My flowers raise their pretty lips,
816Then put their nightgowns on.
817As children caper when they wake,
818Merry that it is morn,
819My flowers from a hundred cribs
820Will peep, and prance again.
821Angels in the early morning
822May be seen the dews among,
823Stooping, plucking, smiling, flying:
824Do the buds to them belong?
825Angels when the sun is hottest
826May be seen the sands among,
827Stooping, plucking, sighing, flying;
828Parched the flowers they bear along.
829So bashful when I spied her,
830So pretty, so ashamed!
831So hidden in her leaflets,
832Lest anybody find;
833So breathless till I passed her,
834So helpless when I turned
835And bore her, struggling, blushing,
836Her simple haunts beyond!
837For whom I robbed the dingle,
838For whom betrayed the dell,
839Many will doubtless ask me,
840But I shall never tell!
841It makes no difference abroad,
842The seasons fit the same,
843The mornings blossom into noons,
844And split their pods of flame.
845Wild-flowers kindle in the woods,
846The brooks brag all the day;
847No blackbird bates his jargoning
848For passing Calvary.
849Auto-da-fe and judgment
850Are nothing to the bee;
851His separation from his rose
852To him seems misery.
853The mountain sat upon the plain
854In his eternal chair,
855His observation omnifold,
856His inquest everywhere.
857The seasons prayed around his knees,
858Like children round a sire:
859Grandfather of the days is he,
860Of dawn the ancestor.
861I'll tell you how the sun rose, --
862A ribbon at a time.
863The steeples swam in amethyst,
864The news like squirrels ran.
865The hills untied their bonnets,
866The bobolinks begun.
867Then I said softly to myself,
868"That must have been the sun!"
869But how he set, I know not.
870There seemed a purple stile
871Which little yellow boys and girls
872Were climbing all the while
873Till when they reached the other side,
874A dominie in gray
875Put gently up the evening bars,
876And led the flock away.
877The butterfly's assumption-gown,
878In chrysoprase apartments hung,
879   This afternoon put on.
880How condescending to descend,
881And be of buttercups the friend
882   In a New England town!
883Of all the sounds despatched abroad,
884There's not a charge to me
885Like that old measure in the boughs,
886That phraseless melody
887The wind does, working like a hand
888Whose fingers brush the sky,
889Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
890Permitted gods and me.
891When winds go round and round in bands,
892And thrum upon the door,
893And birds take places overhead,
894To bear them orchestra,
895I crave him grace, of summer boughs,
896If such an outcast be,
897He never heard that fleshless chant
898Rise solemn in the tree,
899As if some caravan of sound
900On deserts, in the sky,
901Had broken rank,
902Then knit, and passed
903In seamless company.
904Apparently with no surprise
905To any happy flower,
906The frost beheads it at its play
907In accidental power.
908The blond assassin passes on,
909The sun proceeds unmoved
910To measure off another day
911For an approving God.
912'T was later when the summer went
913Than when the cricket came,
914And yet we knew that gentle clock
915Meant nought but going home.
916'T was sooner when the cricket went
917Than when the winter came,
918Yet that pathetic pendulum
919Keeps esoteric time.
920These are the days when birds come back,
921A very few, a bird or two,
922To take a backward look.
923These are the days when skies put on
924The old, old sophistries of June, --
925A blue and gold mistake.
926Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
927Almost thy plausibility
928Induces my belief,
929Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
930And softly through the altered air
931Hurries a timid leaf!
932Oh, sacrament of summer days,
933Oh, last communion in the haze,
934Permit a child to join,
935Thy sacred emblems to partake,
936Thy consecrated bread to break,
937Taste thine immortal wine!
938The morns are meeker than they were,
939The nuts are getting brown;
940The berry's cheek is plumper,
941The rose is out of town.
942The maple wears a gayer scarf,
943The field a scarlet gown.
944Lest I should be old-fashioned,
945I'll put a trinket on.
946The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
947A travelling flake of snow
948Across a barn or through a rut
949Debates if it will go.
950A narrow wind complains all day
951How some one treated him;
952Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
953Without her diadem.
954I think the hemlock likes to stand
955Upon a marge of snow;
956It suits his own austerity,
957And satisfies an awe
958That men must slake in wilderness,
959Or in the desert cloy, --
960An instinct for the hoar, the bald,
961Lapland's necessity.
962The hemlock's nature thrives on cold;
963The gnash of northern winds
964Is sweetest nutriment to him,
965His best Norwegian wines.
966To satin races he is nought;
967But children on the Don
968Beneath his tabernacles play,
969And Dnieper wrestlers run.
970There's a certain slant of light,
971On winter afternoons,
972That oppresses, like the weight
973Of cathedral tunes.
974Heavenly hurt it gives us;
975We can find no scar,
976But internal difference
977Where the meanings are.
978None may teach it anything,
979' T is the seal, despair, --
980An imperial affliction
981Sent us of the air.
982When it comes, the landscape listens,
983Shadows hold their breath;
984When it goes, 't is like the distance
985On the look of death.
986One dignity delays for all,
987One mitred afternoon.
988None can avoid this purple,
989None evade this crown.
990Coach it insures, and footmen,
991Chamber and state and throng;
992Bells, also, in the village,
993As we ride grand along.
994What dignified attendants,
995What service when we pause!
996How loyally at parting
997Their hundred hats they raise!
998How pomp surpassing ermine,
999When simple you and I
1000Present our meek escutcheon,
1001And claim the rank to die!
1002Delayed till she had ceased to know,
1003Delayed till in its vest of snow
1004    Her loving bosom lay.
1005An hour behind the fleeting breath,
1006Later by just an hour than death, --
1007    Oh, lagging yesterday!
1008Could she have guessed that it would be;
1009Could but a crier of the glee
1010    Have climbed the distant hill;
1011Had not the bliss so slow a pace, --
1012Who knows but this surrendered face
1013    Were undefeated still?
1014Oh, if there may departing be
1015Any forgot by victory
1016    In her imperial round,
1017Show them this meek apparelled thing,
1018That could not stop to be a king,
1019    Doubtful if it be crowned!
1020Departed to the judgment,
1021A mighty afternoon;
1022Great clouds like ushers leaning,
1023Creation looking on.
1024The flesh surrendered, cancelled,
1025The bodiless begun;
1026Two worlds, like audiences, disperse
1027And leave the soul alone.
1028Safe in their alabaster chambers,
1029Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
1030Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
1031Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.
1032Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
1033Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
1034Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, --
1035Ah, what sagacity perished here!
1036Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
1037Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
1038Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
1039Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.
1040On this long storm the rainbow rose,
1041On this late morn the sun;
1042The clouds, like listless elephants,
1043Horizons straggled down.
1044The birds rose smiling in their nests,
1045The gales indeed were done;
1046Alas! how heedless were the eyes
1047On whom the summer shone!
1048The quiet nonchalance of death
1049No daybreak can bestir;
1050The slow archangel's syllables
1051Must awaken her.
1052My cocoon tightens, colors tease,
1053I'm feeling for the air;
1054A dim capacity for wings
1055Degrades the dress I wear.
1056A power of butterfly must be
1057The aptitude to fly,
1058Meadows of majesty concedes
1059And easy sweeps of sky.
1060So I must baffle at the hint
1061And cipher at the sign,
1062And make much blunder, if at last
1063I take the clew divine.
1064Exultation is the going
1065Of an inland soul to sea, --
1066Past the houses, past the headlands,
1067Into deep eternity!
1068Bred as we, among the mountains,
1069Can the sailor understand
1070The divine intoxication
1071Of the first league out from land?
1072Look back on time with kindly eyes,
1073He doubtless did his best;
1074How softly sinks his trembling sun
1075In human nature's west!
1076A train went through a burial gate,
1077A bird broke forth and sang,
1078And trilled, and quivered, and shook his throat
1079Till all the churchyard rang;
1080And then adjusted his little notes,
1081And bowed and sang again.
1082Doubtless, he thought it meet of him
1083To say good-by to men.
1084I died for beauty, but was scarce
1085Adjusted in the tomb,
1086When one who died for truth was lain
1087In an adjoining room.
1088He questioned softly why I failed?
1089"For beauty," I replied.
1090"And I for truth, -- the two are one;
1091We brethren are," he said.
1092And so, as kinsmen met a night,
1093We talked between the rooms,
1094Until the moss had reached our lips,
1095And covered up our names.
1096How many times these low feet staggered,
1097Only the soldered mouth can tell;
1098Try! can you stir the awful rivet?
1099Try! can you lift the hasps of steel?
1100Stroke the cool forehead, hot so often,
1101Lift, if you can, the listless hair;
1102Handle the adamantine fingers
1103Never a thimble more shall wear.
1104Buzz the dull flies on the chamber window;
1105Brave shines the sun through the freckled pane;
1106Fearless the cobweb swings from the ceiling --
1107Indolent housewife, in daisies lain!
1108I like a look of agony,
1109Because I know it 's true;
1110Men do not sham convulsion,
1111Nor simulate a throe.
1112The eyes glaze once, and that is death.
1113Impossible to feign
1114The beads upon the forehead
1115By homely anguish strung.
1116That short, potential stir
1117That each can make but once,
1118That bustle so illustrious
1119'T is almost consequence,
1120Is the eclat of death.
1121Oh, thou unknown renown
1122That not a beggar would accept,
1123Had he the power to spurn!
1124I went to thank her,
1125But she slept;
1126Her bed a funnelled stone,
1127With nosegays at the head and foot,
1128That travellers had thrown,
1129Who went to thank her;
1130But she slept.
1131'T was short to cross the sea
1132To look upon her like, alive,
1133But turning back 't was slow.
1134I've seen a dying eye
1135Run round and round a room
1136In search of something, as it seemed,
1137Then cloudier become;
1138And then, obscure with fog,
1139And then be soldered down,
1140Without disclosing what it be,
1141'T were blessed to have seen.
1142The clouds their backs together laid,
1143The north begun to push,
1144The forests galloped till they fell,
1145The lightning skipped like mice;
1146The thunder crumbled like a stuff --
1147How good to be safe in tombs,
1148Where nature's temper cannot reach,
1149Nor vengeance ever comes!
1150I never saw a moor,
1151I never saw the sea;
1152Yet know I how the heather looks,
1153And what a wave must be.
1154I never spoke with God,
1155Nor visited in heaven;
1156Yet certain am I of the spot
1157As if the chart were given.
1158God permits industrious angels
1159Afternoons to play.
1160I met one, -- forgot my school-mates,
1161All, for him, straightway.
1162God calls home the angels promptly
1163At the setting sun;
1164I missed mine. How dreary marbles,
1165After playing Crown!
1166To know just how he suffered would be dear;
1167To know if any human eyes were near
1168To whom he could intrust his wavering gaze,
1169Until it settled firm on Paradise.
1170To know if he was patient, part content,
1171Was dying as he thought, or different;
1172Was it a pleasant day to die,
1173And did the sunshine face his way?
1174What was his furthest mind, of home, or God,
1175Or what the distant say
1176At news that he ceased human nature
1177On such a day?
1178And wishes, had he any?
1179Just his sigh, accented,
1180Had been legible to me.
1181And was he confident until
1182Ill fluttered out in everlasting well?
1183And if he spoke, what name was best,
1184What first,
1185What one broke off with
1186At the drowsiest?
1187Was he afraid, or tranquil?
1188Might he know
1189How conscious consciousness could grow,
1190Till love that was, and love too blest to be,
1191Meet -- and the junction be Eternity?
1192The last night that she lived,
1193It was a common night,
1194Except the dying; this to us
1195Made nature different.
1196We noticed smallest things, --
1197Things overlooked before,
1198By this great light upon our minds
1199Italicized, as 't were.
1200That others could exist
1201While she must finish quite,
1202A jealousy for her arose
1203So nearly infinite.
1204We waited while she passed;
1205It was a narrow time,
1206Too jostled were our souls to speak,
1207At length the notice came.
1208She mentioned, and forgot;
1209Then lightly as a reed
1210Bent to the water, shivered scarce,
1211Consented, and was dead.
1212And we, we placed the hair,
1213And drew the head erect;
1214And then an awful leisure was,
1215Our faith to regulate.
1216Not in this world to see his face
1217Sounds long, until I read the place
1218Where this is said to be
1219But just the primer to a life
1220Unopened, rare, upon the shelf,
1221Clasped yet to him and me.
1222And yet, my primer suits me so
1223I would not choose a book to know
1224Than that, be sweeter wise;
1225Might some one else so learned be,
1226And leave me just my A B C,
1227Himself could have the skies.
1228The bustle in a house
1229The morning after death
1230Is solemnest of industries
1231Enacted upon earth, --
1232The sweeping up the heart,
1233And putting love away
1234We shall not want to use again
1235Until eternity.
1236I reason, earth is short,
1237And anguish absolute,
1238And many hurt;
1239But what of that?
1240I reason, we could die:
1241The best vitality
1242Cannot excel decay;
1243But what of that?
1244I reason that in heaven
1245Somehow, it will be even,
1246Some new equation given;
1247But what of that?
1248Afraid? Of whom am I afraid?
1249Not death; for who is he?
1250The porter of my father's lodge
1251As much abasheth me.
1252Of life? 'T were odd I fear a thing
1253That comprehendeth me
1254In one or more existences
1255At Deity's decree.
1256Of resurrection? Is the east
1257Afraid to trust the morn
1258With her fastidious forehead?
1259As soon impeach my crown!
1260The sun kept setting, setting still;
1261No hue of afternoon
1262Upon the village I perceived, --
1263From house to house 't was noon.
1264The dusk kept dropping, dropping still;
1265No dew upon the grass,
1266But only on my forehead stopped,
1267And wandered in my face.
1268My feet kept drowsing, drowsing still,
1269My fingers were awake;
1270Yet why so little sound myself
1271Unto my seeming make?
1272How well I knew the light before!
1273I could not see it now.
1274'T is dying, I am doing; but
1275I'm not afraid to know.
1276Two swimmers wrestled on the spar
1277Until the morning sun,
1278When one turned smiling to the land.
1279O God, the other one!
1280The stray ships passing spied a face
1281Upon the waters borne,
1282With eyes in death still begging raised,
1283And hands beseeching thrown.
1284Because I could not stop for Death,
1285He kindly stopped for me;
1286The carriage held but just ourselves
1287And Immortality.
1288We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
1289And I had put away
1290My labor, and my leisure too,
1291For his civility.
1292We passed the school where children played,
1293Their lessons scarcely done;
1294We passed the fields of gazing grain,
1295We passed the setting sun.
1296We paused before a house that seemed
1297A swelling of the ground;
1298The roof was scarcely visible,
1299The cornice but a mound.
1300Since then 't is centuries; but each
1301Feels shorter than the day
1302I first surmised the horses' heads
1303Were toward eternity.
1304She went as quiet as the dew
1305From a familiar flower.
1306Not like the dew did she return
1307At the accustomed hour!
1308She dropt as softly as a star
1309From out my summer's eve;
1310Less skilful than Leverrier
1311It's sorer to believe!
1312At last to be identified!
1313At last, the lamps upon thy side,
1314The rest of life to see!
1315Past midnight, past the morning star!
1316Past sunrise! Ah! what leagues there are
1317Between our feet and day!
1318Except to heaven, she is nought;
1319Except for angels, lone;
1320Except to some wide-wandering bee,
1321A flower superfluous blown;
1322Except for winds, provincial;
1323Except by butterflies,
1324Unnoticed as a single dew
1325That on the acre lies.
1326The smallest housewife in the grass,
1327Yet take her from the lawn,
1328And somebody has lost the face
1329That made existence home!
1330Death is a dialogue between
1331The spirit and the dust.
1332"Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,
1333I have another trust."
1334Death doubts it, argues from the ground.
1335The Spirit turns away,
1336Just laying off, for evidence,
1337An overcoat of clay.
1338It was too late for man,
1339But early yet for God;
1340Creation impotent to help,
1341But prayer remained our side.
1342How excellent the heaven,
1343When earth cannot be had;
1344How hospitable, then, the face
1345Of our old neighbor, God!
1346When I was small, a woman died.
1347To-day her only boy
1348Went up from the Potomac,
1349His face all victory,
1350To look at her; how slowly
1351The seasons must have turned
1352Till bullets clipt an angle,
1353And he passed quickly round!
1354If pride shall be in Paradise
1355I never can decide;
1356Of their imperial conduct,
1357No person testified.
1358But proud in apparition,
1359That woman and her boy
1360Pass back and forth before my brain,
1361As ever in the sky.
1362The daisy follows soft the sun,
1363And when his golden walk is done,
1364    Sits shyly at his feet.
1365He, waking, finds the flower near.
1366"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"
1367    "Because, sir, love is sweet!"
1368We are the flower, Thou the sun!
1369Forgive us, if as days decline,
1370    We nearer steal to Thee, --
1371Enamoured of the parting west,
1372The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
1373    Night's possibility!
1374No rack can torture me,
1375My soul's at liberty
1376Behind this mortal bone
1377There knits a bolder one
1378You cannot prick with saw,
1379Nor rend with scymitar.
1380Two bodies therefore be;
1381Bind one, and one will flee.
1382The eagle of his nest
1383No easier divest
1384And gain the sky,
1385Than mayest thou,
1386Except thyself may be
1387Thine enemy;
1388Captivity is consciousness,
1389So's liberty.
1390I lost a world the other day.
1391Has anybody found?
1392You'll know it by the row of stars
1393Around its forehead bound.
1394A rich man might not notice it;
1395Yet to my frugal eye
1396Of more esteem than ducats.
1397Oh, find it, sir, for me!
1398If I shouldn't be alive
1399When the robins come,
1400Give the one in red cravat
1401A memorial crumb.
1402If I couldn't thank you,
1403Being just asleep,
1404You will know I'm trying
1405With my granite lip!
1406Sleep is supposed to be,
1407By souls of sanity,
1408The shutting of the eye.
1409Sleep is the station grand
1410Down which on either hand
1411The hosts of witness stand!
1412Morn is supposed to be,
1413By people of degree,
1414The breaking of the day.
1415Morning has not occurred!
1416That shall aurora be
1417East of eternity;
1418One with the banner gay,
1419One in the red array, --
1420That is the break of day.
1421I shall know why, when time is over,
1422And I have ceased to wonder why;
1423Christ will explain each separate anguish
1424In the fair schoolroom of the sky.
1425He will tell me what Peter promised,
1426And I, for wonder at his woe,
1427I shall forget the drop of anguish
1428That scalds me now, that scalds me now.
1429I never lost as much but twice,
1430And that was in the sod;
1431Twice have I stood a beggar
1432Before the door of God!
1433Angels, twice descending,
1434Reimbursed my store.
1435Burglar, banker, father,
1436I am poor once more!
1437 
1438 
1439SECOND SERIES
1440I'm nobody! Who are you?
1441Are you nobody, too?
1442Then there 's a pair of us -- don't tell!
1443They 'd banish us, you know.
1444How dreary to be somebody!
1445How public, like a frog
1446To tell your name the livelong day
1447To an admiring bog!
1448I bring an unaccustomed wine
1449To lips long parching, next to mine,
1450And summon them to drink.
1451Crackling with fever, they essay;
1452I turn my brimming eyes away,
1453And come next hour to look.
1454The hands still hug the tardy glass;
1455The lips I would have cooled, alas!
1456Are so superfluous cold,
1457I would as soon attempt to warm
1458The bosoms where the frost has lain
1459Ages beneath the mould.
1460Some other thirsty there may be
1461To whom this would have pointed me
1462Had it remained to speak.
1463And so I always bear the cup
1464If, haply, mine may be the drop
1465Some pilgrim thirst to slake, --
1466If, haply, any say to me,
1467"Unto the little, unto me,"
1468When I at last awake.
1469The nearest dream recedes, unrealized.
1470       The heaven we chase
1471       Like the June bee
1472       Before the school-boy
1473       Invites the race;
1474       Stoops to an easy clover --
1475Dips -- evades -- teases -- deploys;
1476       Then to the royal clouds
1477       Lifts his light pinnace
1478       Heedless of the boy
1479Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.
1480       Homesick for steadfast honey,
1481       Ah! the bee flies not
1482That brews that rare variety.
1483We play at paste,
1484Till qualified for pearl,
1485Then drop the paste,
1486And deem ourself a fool.
1487The shapes, though, were similar,
1488And our new hands
1489Learned gem-tactics
1490Practising sands.
1491I found the phrase to every thought
1492I ever had, but one;
1493And that defies me, -- as a hand
1494Did try to chalk the sun
1495To races nurtured in the dark; --
1496How would your own begin?
1497Can blaze be done in cochineal,
1498Or noon in mazarin?
1499Hope is the thing with feathers
1500That perches in the soul,
1501And sings the tune without the words,
1502And never stops at all,
1503And sweetest in the gale is heard;
1504And sore must be the storm
1505That could abash the little bird
1506That kept so many warm.
1507I 've heard it in the chillest land,
1508And on the strangest sea;
1509Yet, never, in extremity,
1510It asked a crumb of me.
1511Dare you see a soul at the white heat?
1512    Then crouch within the door.
1513Red is the fire's common tint;
1514    But when the vivid ore
1515Has sated flame's conditions,
1516    Its quivering substance plays
1517Without a color but the light
1518    Of unanointed blaze.
1519Least village boasts its blacksmith,
1520    Whose anvil's even din
1521Stands symbol for the finer forge
1522    That soundless tugs within,
1523Refining these impatient ores
1524    With hammer and with blaze,
1525Until the designated light
1526    Repudiate the forge.
1527Who never lost, are unprepared
1528A coronet to find;
1529Who never thirsted, flagons
1530And cooling tamarind.
1531Who never climbed the weary league --
1532Can such a foot explore
1533The purple territories
1534On Pizarro's shore?
1535How many legions overcome?
1536The emperor will say.
1537How many colors taken
1538On Revolution Day?
1539How many bullets bearest?
1540The royal scar hast thou?
1541Angels, write "Promoted"
1542On this soldier's brow!
1543I can wade grief,
1544Whole pools of it, --
1545I 'm used to that.
1546But the least push of joy
1547Breaks up my feet,
1548And I tip -- drunken.
1549Let no pebble smile,
1550'T was the new liquor, --
1551That was all!
1552Power is only pain,
1553Stranded, through discipline,
1554Till weights will hang.
1555Give balm to giants,
1556And they 'll wilt, like men.
1557Give Himmaleh, --
1558They 'll carry him!
1559I never hear the word "escape"
1560Without a quicker blood,
1561A sudden expectation,
1562A flying attitude.
1563I never hear of prisons broad
1564By soldiers battered down,
1565But I tug childish at my bars, --
1566Only to fail again!
1567For each ecstatic instant
1568We must an anguish pay
1569In keen and quivering ratio
1570To the ecstasy.
1571For each beloved hour
1572Sharp pittances of years,
1573Bitter contested farthings
1574And coffers heaped with tears.
1575Through the straight pass of suffering
1576The martyrs even trod,
1577Their feet upon temptation,
1578Their faces upon God.
1579A stately, shriven company;
1580Convulsion playing round,
1581Harmless as streaks of meteor
1582Upon a planet's bound.
1583Their faith the everlasting troth;
1584Their expectation fair;
1585The needle to the north degree
1586Wades so, through polar air.
1587I meant to have but modest needs,
1588Such as content, and heaven;
1589Within my income these could lie,
1590And life and I keep even.
1591But since the last included both,
1592It would suffice my prayer
1593But just for one to stipulate,
1594And grace would grant the pair.
1595And so, upon this wise I prayed, --
1596Great Spirit, give to me
1597A heaven not so large as yours,
1598But large enough for me.
1599A smile suffused Jehovah's face;
1600The cherubim withdrew;
1601Grave saints stole out to look at me,
1602And showed their dimples, too.
1603I left the place with all my might, --
1604My prayer away I threw;
1605The quiet ages picked it up,
1606And Judgment twinkled, too,
1607That one so honest be extant
1608As take the tale for true
1609That "Whatsoever you shall ask,
1610Itself be given you."
1611But I, grown shrewder, scan the skies
1612With a suspicious air, --
1613As children, swindled for the first,
1614All swindlers be, infer.
1615The thought beneath so slight a film
1616Is more distinctly seen, --
1617As laces just reveal the surge,
1618Or mists the Apennine.
1619The soul unto itself
1620Is an imperial friend, --
1621Or the most agonizing spy
1622An enemy could send.
1623Secure against its own,
1624No treason it can fear;
1625Itself its sovereign, of itself
1626The soul should stand in awe.
1627Surgeons must be very careful
1628When they take the knife!
1629Underneath their fine incisions
1630Stirs the culprit, -- Life!
1631I like to see it lap the miles,
1632And lick the valleys up,
1633And stop to feed itself at tanks;
1634And then, prodigious, step
1635Around a pile of mountains,
1636And, supercilious, peer
1637In shanties by the sides of roads;
1638And then a quarry pare
1639To fit its sides, and crawl between,
1640Complaining all the while
1641In horrid, hooting stanza;
1642Then chase itself down hill
1643And neigh like Boanerges;
1644Then, punctual as a star,
1645Stop -- docile and omnipotent --
1646At its own stable door.
1647The show is not the show,
1648But they that go.
1649Menagerie to me
1650My neighbor be.
1651Fair play --
1652Both went to see.
1653Delight becomes pictorial
1654When viewed through pain, --
1655More fair, because impossible
1656That any gain.
1657The mountain at a given distance
1658In amber lies;
1659Approached, the amber flits a little, --
1660And that 's the skies!
1661A thought went up my mind to-day
1662That I have had before,
1663But did not finish, -- some way back,
1664I could not fix the year,
1665Nor where it went, nor why it came
1666The second time to me,
1667Nor definitely what it was,
1668Have I the art to say.
1669But somewhere in my soul, I know
1670I 've met the thing before;
1671It just reminded me -- 't was all --
1672And came my way no more.
1673Is Heaven a physician?
1674They say that He can heal;
1675But medicine posthumous
1676    Is unavailable.
1677Is Heaven an exchequer?
1678    They speak of what we owe;
1679But that negotiation
1680    I 'm not a party to.
1681Though I get home how late, how late!
1682So I get home, 't will compensate.
1683Better will be the ecstasy
1684That they have done expecting me,
1685When, night descending, dumb and dark,
1686They hear my unexpected knock.
1687Transporting must the moment be,
1688Brewed from decades of agony!
1689To think just how the fire will burn,
1690Just how long-cheated eyes will turn
1691To wonder what myself will say,
1692And what itself will say to me,
1693Beguiles the centuries of way!
1694A poor torn heart, a tattered heart,
1695That sat it down to rest,
1696Nor noticed that the ebbing day
1697Flowed silver to the west,
1698Nor noticed night did soft descend
1699Nor constellation burn,
1700Intent upon the vision
1701Of latitudes unknown.
1702The angels, happening that way,
1703This dusty heart espied;
1704Tenderly took it up from toil
1705And carried it to God.
1706There, -- sandals for the barefoot;
1707There, -- gathered from the gales,
1708Do the blue havens by the hand
1709Lead the wandering sails.
1710I should have been too glad, I see,
1711Too lifted for the scant degree
1712    Of life's penurious round;
1713My little circuit would have shamed
1714This new circumference, have blamed
1715    The homelier time behind.
1716I should have been too saved, I see,
1717Too rescued; fear too dim to me
1718    That I could spell the prayer
1719I knew so perfect yesterday, --
1720That scalding one, "Sabachthani,"
1721    Recited fluent here.
1722Earth would have been too much, I see,
1723And heaven not enough for me;
1724    I should have had the joy
1725Without the fear to justify, --
1726The palm without the Calvary;
1727    So, Saviour, crucify.
1728Defeat whets victory, they say;
1729The reefs in old Gethsemane
1730    Endear the shore beyond.
1731'T is beggars banquets best define;
1732'T is thirsting vitalizes wine, --
1733    Faith faints to understand.
1734It tossed and tossed, --
1735A little brig I knew, --
1736O'ertook by blast,
1737It spun and spun,
1738And groped delirious, for morn.
1739It slipped and slipped,
1740As one that drunken stepped;
1741Its white foot tripped,
1742Then dropped from sight.
1743Ah, brig, good-night
1744To crew and you;
1745The ocean's heart too smooth, too blue,
1746To break for you.
1747Victory comes late,
1748And is held low to freezing lips
1749Too rapt with frost
1750To take it.
1751How sweet it would have tasted,
1752Just a drop!
1753Was God so economical?
1754His table 's spread too high for us
1755Unless we dine on tip-toe.
1756Crumbs fit such little mouths,
1757Cherries suit robins;
1758The eagle's golden breakfast
1759Strangles them.
1760God keeps his oath to sparrows,
1761Who of little love
1762Know how to starve!
1763God gave a loaf to every bird,
1764But just a crumb to me;
1765I dare not eat it, though I starve, --
1766My poignant luxury
1767To own it, touch it, prove the feat
1768That made the pellet mine, --
1769Too happy in my sparrow chance
1770For ampler coveting.
1771It might be famine all around,
1772I could not miss an ear,
1773Such plenty smiles upon my board,
1774My garner shows so fair.
1775I wonder how the rich may feel, --
1776An Indiaman -- an Earl?
1777I deem that I with but a crumb
1778Am sovereign of them all.
1779Experiment to me
1780Is every one I meet.
1781If it contain a kernel?
1782The figure of a nut
1783Presents upon a tree,
1784Equally plausibly;
1785But meat within is requisite,
1786To squirrels and to me.
1787My country need not change her gown,
1788Her triple suit as sweet
1789As when 't was cut at Lexington,
1790And first pronounced "a fit."
1791Great Britain disapproves "the stars;"
1792Disparagement discreet, --
1793There 's something in their attitude
1794That taunts her bayonet.
1795Faith is a fine invention
1796For gentlemen who see;
1797But microscopes are prudent
1798In an emergency!
1799Except the heaven had come so near,
1800So seemed to choose my door,
1801The distance would not haunt me so;
1802I had not hoped before.
1803But just to hear the grace depart
1804I never thought to see,
1805Afflicts me with a double loss;
1806'T is lost, and lost to me.
1807Portraits are to daily faces
1808As an evening west
1809To a fine, pedantic sunshine
1810In a satin vest.
1811I took my power in my hand.
1812And went against the world;
1813'T was not so much as David had,
1814But I was twice as bold.
1815I aimed my pebble, but myself
1816Was all the one that fell.
1817Was it Goliath was too large,
1818Or only I too small?
1819A shady friend for torrid days
1820Is easier to find
1821Than one of higher temperature
1822For frigid hour of mind.
1823The vane a little to the east
1824Scares muslin souls away;
1825If broadcloth breasts are firmer
1826Than those of organdy,
1827Who is to blame? The weaver?
1828Ah! the bewildering thread!
1829The tapestries of paradise
1830So notelessly are made!
1831Each life converges to some centre
1832Expressed or still;
1833Exists in every human nature
1834A goal,
1835Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be,
1836Too fair
1837For credibility's temerity
1838To dare.
1839Adored with caution, as a brittle heaven,
1840To reach
1841Were hopeless as the rainbow's raiment
1842To touch,
1843Yet persevered toward, surer for the distance;
1844How high
1845Unto the saints' slow diligence
1846The sky!
1847Ungained, it may be, by a life's low venture,
1848But then,
1849Eternity enables the endeavoring
1850Again.
1851Before I got my eye put out,
1852I liked as well to see
1853As other creatures that have eyes,
1854And know no other way.
1855But were it told to me, to-day,
1856That I might have the sky
1857For mine, I tell you that my heart
1858Would split, for size of me.
1859The meadows mine, the mountains mine, --
1860All forests, stintless stars,
1861As much of noon as I could take
1862Between my finite eyes.
1863The motions of the dipping birds,
1864The lightning's jointed road,
1865For mine to look at when I liked, --
1866The news would strike me dead!
1867So safer, guess, with just my soul
1868Upon the window-pane
1869Where other creatures put their eyes,
1870Incautious of the sun.
1871Talk with prudence to a beggar
1872Of 'Potosi' and the mines!
1873Reverently to the hungry
1874Of your viands and your wines!
1875Cautious, hint to any captive
1876You have passed enfranchised feet!
1877Anecdotes of air in dungeons
1878Have sometimes proved deadly sweet!
1879He preached upon "breadth" till it argued him narrow, --
1880The broad are too broad to define;
1881And of "truth" until it proclaimed him a liar, --
1882The truth never flaunted a sign.
1883Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence
1884As gold the pyrites would shun.
1885What confusion would cover the innocent Jesus
1886To meet so enabled a man!
1887Good night! which put the candle out?
1888A jealous zephyr, not a doubt.
1889    Ah! friend, you little knew
1890How long at that celestial wick
1891The angels labored diligent;
1892    Extinguished, now, for you!
1893It might have been the lighthouse spark
1894Some sailor, rowing in the dark,
1895    Had importuned to see!
1896It might have been the waning lamp
1897That lit the drummer from the camp
1898    To purer reveille!
1899When I hoped I feared,
1900Since I hoped I dared;
1901Everywhere alone
1902As a church remain;
1903Spectre cannot harm,
1904Serpent cannot charm;
1905He deposes doom,
1906Who hath suffered him.
1907A deed knocks first at thought,
1908And then it knocks at will.
1909That is the manufacturing spot,
1910And will at home and well.
1911It then goes out an act,
1912Or is entombed so still
1913That only to the ear of God
1914Its doom is audible.
1915Mine enemy is growing old, --
1916I have at last revenge.
1917The palate of the hate departs;
1918If any would avenge, --
1919Let him be quick, the viand flits,
1920It is a faded meat.
1921Anger as soon as fed is dead;
1922'T is starving makes it fat.
1923Remorse is memory awake,
1924Her companies astir, --
1925A presence of departed acts
1926At window and at door.
1927It's past set down before the soul,
1928And lighted with a match,
1929Perusal to facilitate
1930Of its condensed despatch.
1931Remorse is cureless, -- the disease
1932Not even God can heal;
1933For 't is his institution, --
1934The complement of hell.
1935The body grows outside, --
1936The more convenient way, --
1937That if the spirit like to hide,
1938Its temple stands alway
1939Ajar, secure, inviting;
1940It never did betray
1941The soul that asked its shelter
1942In timid honesty.
1943Undue significance a starving man attaches
1944To food
1945Far off; he sighs, and therefore hopeless,
1946And therefore good.
1947Partaken, it relieves indeed, but proves us
1948That spices fly
1949In the receipt. It was the distance
1950Was savory.
1951Heart not so heavy as mine,
1952Wending late home,
1953As it passed my window
1954Whistled itself a tune, --
1955A careless snatch, a ballad,
1956A ditty of the street;
1957Yet to my irritated ear
1958An anodyne so sweet,
1959It was as if a bobolink,
1960Sauntering this way,
1961Carolled and mused and carolled,
1962Then bubbled slow away.
1963It was as if a chirping brook
1964Upon a toilsome way
1965Set bleeding feet to minuets
1966Without the knowing why.
1967To-morrow, night will come again,
1968Weary, perhaps, and sore.
1969Ah, bugle, by my window,
1970I pray you stroll once more!
1971I many times thought peace had come,
1972When peace was far away;
1973As wrecked men deem they sight the land
1974At centre of the sea,
1975And struggle slacker, but to prove,
1976As hopelessly as I,
1977How many the fictitious shores
1978Before the harbor lie.
1979Unto my books so good to turn
1980Far ends of tired days;
1981It half endears the abstinence,
1982And pain is missed in praise.
1983As flavors cheer retarded guests
1984With banquetings to be,
1985So spices stimulate the time
1986Till my small library.
1987It may be wilderness without,
1988Far feet of failing men,
1989But holiday excludes the night,
1990And it is bells within.
1991I thank these kinsmen of the shelf;
1992Their countenances bland
1993Enamour in prospective,
1994And satisfy, obtained.
1995This merit hath the worst, --
1996It cannot be again.
1997When Fate hath taunted last
1998And thrown her furthest stone,
1999The maimed may pause and breathe,
2000And glance securely round.
2001The deer invites no longer
2002Than it eludes the hound.
2003I had been hungry all the years;
2004My noon had come, to dine;
2005I, trembling, drew the table near,
2006And touched the curious wine.
2007'T was this on tables I had seen,
2008When turning, hungry, lone,
2009I looked in windows, for the wealth
2010I could not hope to own.
2011I did not know the ample bread,
2012'T was so unlike the crumb
2013The birds and I had often shared
2014In Nature's dining-room.
2015The plenty hurt me, 't was so new, --
2016Myself felt ill and odd,
2017As berry of a mountain bush
2018Transplanted to the road.
2019Nor was I hungry; so I found
2020That hunger was a way
2021Of persons outside windows,
2022The entering takes away.
2023I gained it so,
2024       By climbing slow,
2025By catching at the twigs that grow
2026Between the bliss and me.
2027       It hung so high,
2028       As well the sky
2029       Attempt by strategy.
2030I said I gained it, --
2031       This was all.
2032Look, how I clutch it,
2033       Lest it fall,
2034And I a pauper go;
2035Unfitted by an instant's grace
2036For the contented beggar's face
2037I wore an hour ago.
2038To learn the transport by the pain,
2039As blind men learn the sun;
2040To die of thirst, suspecting
2041That brooks in meadows run;
2042To stay the homesick, homesick feet
2043Upon a foreign shore
2044Haunted by native lands, the while,
2045And blue, beloved air --
2046This is the sovereign anguish,
2047This, the signal woe!
2048These are the patient laureates
2049Whose voices, trained below,
2050Ascend in ceaseless carol,
2051Inaudible, indeed,
2052To us, the duller scholars
2053Of the mysterious bard!
2054I years had been from home,
2055And now, before the door,
2056I dared not open, lest a face
2057I never saw before
2058Stare vacant into mine
2059And ask my business there.
2060My business, -- just a life I left,
2061Was such still dwelling there?
2062I fumbled at my nerve,
2063I scanned the windows near;
2064The silence like an ocean rolled,
2065And broke against my ear.
2066I laughed a wooden laugh
2067That I could fear a door,
2068Who danger and the dead had faced,
2069But never quaked before.
2070I fitted to the latch
2071My hand, with trembling care,
2072Lest back the awful door should spring,
2073And leave me standing there.
2074I moved my fingers off
2075As cautiously as glass,
2076And held my ears, and like a thief
2077Fled gasping from the house.
2078Prayer is the little implement
2079Through which men reach
2080Where presence is denied them.
2081They fling their speech
2082By means of it in God's ear;
2083If then He hear,
2084This sums the apparatus
2085Comprised in prayer.
2086I know that he exists
2087Somewhere, in silence.
2088He has hid his rare life
2089From our gross eyes.
2090'T is an instant's play,
2091'T is a fond ambush,
2092Just to make bliss
2093Earn her own surprise!
2094But should the play
2095Prove piercing earnest,
2096Should the glee glaze
2097In death's stiff stare,
2098Would not the fun
2099Look too expensive?
2100Would not the jest
2101Have crawled too far?
2102Musicians wrestle everywhere:
2103All day, among the crowded air,
2104   I hear the silver strife;
2105And -- waking long before the dawn --
2106Such transport breaks upon the town
2107   I think it that "new life!"
2108It is not bird, it has no nest;
2109Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed,
2110   Nor tambourine, nor man;
2111It is not hymn from pulpit read, --
2112The morning stars the treble led
2113   On time's first afternoon!
2114Some say it is the spheres at play!
2115Some say that bright majority
2116   Of vanished dames and men!
2117Some think it service in the place
2118Where we, with late, celestial face,
2119   Please God, shall ascertain!
2120Just lost when I was saved!
2121Just felt the world go by!
2122Just girt me for the onset with eternity,
2123When breath blew back,
2124And on the other side
2125I heard recede the disappointed tide!
2126Therefore, as one returned, I feel,
2127Odd secrets of the line to tell!
2128Some sailor, skirting foreign shores,
2129Some pale reporter from the awful doors
2130Before the seal!
2131Next time, to stay!
2132Next time, the things to see
2133By ear unheard,
2134Unscrutinized by eye.
2135Next time, to tarry,
2136While the ages steal, --
2137Slow tramp the centuries,
2138And the cycles wheel.
2139Of all the souls that stand create
2140I have elected one.
2141When sense from spirit files away,
2142And subterfuge is done;
2143When that which is and that which was
2144Apart, intrinsic, stand,
2145And this brief tragedy of flesh
2146Is shifted like a sand;
2147When figures show their royal front
2148And mists are carved away, --
2149Behold the atom I preferred
2150To all the lists of clay!
2151I have no life but this,
2152To lead it here;
2153Nor any death, but lest
2154Dispelled from there;
2155Nor tie to earths to come,
2156Nor action new,
2157Except through this extent,
2158The realm of you.
2159Your riches taught me poverty.
2160Myself a millionnaire
2161In little wealths, -- as girls could boast, --
2162Till broad as Buenos Ayre,
2163You drifted your dominions
2164A different Peru;
2165And I esteemed all poverty,
2166For life's estate with you.
2167Of mines I little know, myself,
2168But just the names of gems, --
2169The colors of the commonest;
2170And scarce of diadems
2171So much that, did I meet the queen,
2172Her glory I should know:
2173But this must be a different wealth,
2174To miss it beggars so.
2175I 'm sure 't is India all day
2176To those who look on you
2177Without a stint, without a blame, --
2178Might I but be the Jew!
2179I 'm sure it is Golconda,
2180Beyond my power to deem, --
2181To have a smile for mine each day,
2182How better than a gem!
2183At least, it solaces to know
2184That there exists a gold,
2185Although I prove it just in time
2186Its distance to behold!
2187It 's far, far treasure to surmise,
2188And estimate the pearl
2189That slipped my simple fingers through
2190While just a girl at school!
2191I gave myself to him,
2192And took himself for pay.
2193The solemn contract of a life
2194Was ratified this way.
2195The wealth might disappoint,
2196Myself a poorer prove
2197Than this great purchaser suspect,
2198The daily own of Love
2199Depreciate the vision;
2200But, till the merchant buy,
2201Still fable, in the isles of spice,
2202The subtle cargoes lie.
2203At least, 't is mutual risk, --
2204Some found it mutual gain;
2205Sweet debt of Life, -- each night to owe,
2206Insolvent, every noon.
2207"Going to him! Happy letter! Tell him --
2208Tell him the page I didn't write;
2209Tell him I only said the syntax,
2210And left the verb and the pronoun out.
2211Tell him just how the fingers hurried,
2212Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
2213And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
2214So you could see what moved them so.
2215"Tell him it wasn't a practised writer,
2216You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
2217You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
2218As if it held but the might of a child;
2219You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
2220Tell him -- No, you may quibble there,
2221For it would split his heart to know it,
2222And then you and I were silenter.
2223"Tell him night finished before we finished,
2224And the old clock kept neighing 'day!'
2225And you got sleepy and begged to be ended --
2226What could it hinder so, to say?
2227Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
2228But if he ask where you are hid
2229Until to-morrow, -- happy letter!
2230Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!"
2231The way I read a letter 's this:
2232'T is first I lock the door,
2233And push it with my fingers next,
2234For transport it be sure.
2235And then I go the furthest off
2236To counteract a knock;
2237Then draw my little letter forth
2238And softly pick its lock.
2239Then, glancing narrow at the wall,
2240And narrow at the floor,
2241For firm conviction of a mouse
2242Not exorcised before,
2243Peruse how infinite I am
2244To -- no one that you know!
2245And sigh for lack of heaven, -- but not
2246The heaven the creeds bestow.
2247Wild nights! Wild nights!
2248Were I with thee,
2249Wild nights should be
2250Our luxury!
2251Futile the winds
2252To a heart in port, --
2253Done with the compass,
2254Done with the chart.
2255Rowing in Eden!
2256Ah! the sea!
2257Might I but moor
2258To-night in thee!
2259The night was wide, and furnished scant
2260With but a single star,
2261That often as a cloud it met
2262Blew out itself for fear.
2263The wind pursued the little bush,
2264And drove away the leaves
2265November left; then clambered up
2266And fretted in the eaves.
2267No squirrel went abroad;
2268A dog's belated feet
2269Like intermittent plush were heard
2270Adown the empty street.
2271To feel if blinds be fast,
2272And closer to the fire
2273Her little rocking-chair to draw,
2274And shiver for the poor,
2275The housewife's gentle task.
2276"How pleasanter," said she
2277Unto the sofa opposite,
2278"The sleet than May -- no thee!"
2279Did the harebell loose her girdle
2280To the lover bee,
2281Would the bee the harebell hallow
2282Much as formerly?
2283Did the paradise, persuaded,
2284Yield her moat of pearl,
2285Would the Eden be an Eden,
2286Or the earl an earl?
2287A charm invests a face
2288Imperfectly beheld, --
2289The lady dare not lift her veil
2290For fear it be dispelled.
2291But peers beyond her mesh,
2292And wishes, and denies, --
2293Lest interview annul a want
2294That image satisfies.
2295The rose did caper on her cheek,
2296Her bodice rose and fell,
2297Her pretty speech, like drunken men,
2298Did stagger pitiful.
2299Her fingers fumbled at her work, --
2300Her needle would not go;
2301What ailed so smart a little maid
2302It puzzled me to know,
2303Till opposite I spied a cheek
2304That bore another rose;
2305Just opposite, another speech
2306That like the drunkard goes;
2307A vest that, like the bodice, danced
2308To the immortal tune, --
2309Till those two troubled little clocks
2310Ticked softly into one.
2311In lands I never saw, they say,
2312Immortal Alps look down,
2313Whose bonnets touch the firmament,
2314Whose sandals touch the town, --
2315Meek at whose everlasting feet
2316A myriad daisies play.
2317Which, sir, are you, and which am I,
2318Upon an August day?
2319The moon is distant from the sea,
2320And yet with amber hands
2321She leads him, docile as a boy,
2322Along appointed sands.
2323He never misses a degree;
2324Obedient to her eye,
2325He comes just so far toward the town,
2326Just so far goes away.
2327Oh, Signor, thine the amber hand,
2328And mine the distant sea, --
2329Obedient to the least command
2330Thine eyes impose on me.
2331He put the belt around my life, --
2332I heard the buckle snap,
2333And turned away, imperial,
2334My lifetime folding up
2335Deliberate, as a duke would do
2336A kingdom's title-deed, --
2337Henceforth a dedicated sort,
2338A member of the cloud.
2339Yet not too far to come at call,
2340And do the little toils
2341That make the circuit of the rest,
2342And deal occasional smiles
2343To lives that stoop to notice mine
2344And kindly ask it in, --
2345Whose invitation, knew you not
2346For whom I must decline?
2347I held a jewel in my fingers
2348And went to sleep.
2349The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
2350I said: "'T will keep."
2351I woke and chid my honest fingers, --
2352The gem was gone;
2353And now an amethyst remembrance
2354Is all I own.
2355What if I say I shall not wait?
2356What if I burst the fleshly gate
2357And pass, escaped, to thee?
2358What if I file this mortal off,
2359See where it hurt me, -- that 's enough, --
2360And wade in liberty?
2361They cannot take us any more, --
2362Dungeons may call, and guns implore;
2363Unmeaning now, to me,
2364As laughter was an hour ago,
2365Or laces, or a travelling show,
2366Or who died yesterday!
2367Nature, the gentlest mother,
2368Impatient of no child,
2369The feeblest or the waywardest, --
2370Her admonition mild
2371In forest and the hill
2372By traveller is heard,
2373Restraining rampant squirrel
2374Or too impetuous bird.
2375How fair her conversation,
2376A summer afternoon, --
2377Her household, her assembly;
2378And when the sun goes down
2379Her voice among the aisles
2380Incites the timid prayer
2381Of the minutest cricket,
2382The most unworthy flower.
2383When all the children sleep
2384She turns as long away
2385As will suffice to light her lamps;
2386Then, bending from the sky
2387With infinite affection
2388And infiniter care,
2389Her golden finger on her lip,
2390Wills silence everywhere.
2391Will there really be a morning?
2392Is there such a thing as day?
2393Could I see it from the mountains
2394If I were as tall as they?
2395Has it feet like water-lilies?
2396Has it feathers like a bird?
2397Is it brought from famous countries
2398Of which I have never heard?
2399Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
2400Oh, some wise man from the skies!
2401Please to tell a little pilgrim
2402Where the place called morning lies!
2403At half-past three a single bird
2404Unto a silent sky
2405Propounded but a single term
2406Of cautious melody.
2407At half-past four, experiment
2408Had subjugated test,
2409And lo! her silver principle
2410Supplanted all the rest.
2411At half-past seven, element
2412Nor implement was seen,
2413And place was where the presence was,
2414Circumference between.
2415The day came slow, till five o'clock,
2416Then sprang before the hills
2417Like hindered rubies, or the light
2418A sudden musket spills.
2419The purple could not keep the east,
2420The sunrise shook from fold,
2421Like breadths of topaz, packed a night,
2422The lady just unrolled.
2423The happy winds their timbrels took;
2424The birds, in docile rows,
2425Arranged themselves around their prince
2426(The wind is prince of those).
2427The orchard sparkled like a Jew, --
2428How mighty 't was, to stay
2429A guest in this stupendous place,
2430The parlor of the day!
2431The sun just touched the morning;
2432The morning, happy thing,
2433Supposed that he had come to dwell,
2434And life would be all spring.
2435She felt herself supremer, --
2436A raised, ethereal thing;
2437Henceforth for her what holiday!
2438Meanwhile, her wheeling king
2439Trailed slow along the orchards
2440His haughty, spangled hems,
2441Leaving a new necessity, --
2442The want of diadems!
2443The morning fluttered, staggered,
2444Felt feebly for her crown, --
2445Her unanointed forehead
2446Henceforth her only one.
2447The robin is the one
2448That interrupts the morn
2449With hurried, few, express reports
2450When March is scarcely on.
2451The robin is the one
2452That overflows the noon
2453With her cherubic quantity,
2454An April but begun.
2455The robin is the one
2456That speechless from her nest
2457Submits that home and certainty
2458And sanctity are best.
2459From cocoon forth a butterfly
2460As lady from her door
2461Emerged -- a summer afternoon --
2462Repairing everywhere,
2463Without design, that I could trace,
2464Except to stray abroad
2465On miscellaneous enterprise
2466The clovers understood.
2467Her pretty parasol was seen
2468Contracting in a field
2469Where men made hay, then struggling hard
2470With an opposing cloud,
2471Where parties, phantom as herself,
2472To Nowhere seemed to go
2473In purposeless circumference,
2474As 't were a tropic show.
2475And notwithstanding bee that worked,
2476And flower that zealous blew,
2477This audience of idleness
2478Disdained them, from the sky,
2479Till sundown crept, a steady tide,
2480And men that made the hay,
2481And afternoon, and butterfly,
2482Extinguished in its sea.
2483Before you thought of spring,
2484Except as a surmise,
2485You see, God bless his suddenness,
2486A fellow in the skies
2487Of independent hues,
2488A little weather-worn,
2489Inspiriting habiliments
2490Of indigo and brown.
2491With specimens of song,
2492As if for you to choose,
2493Discretion in the interval,
2494With gay delays he goes
2495To some superior tree
2496Without a single leaf,
2497And shouts for joy to nobody
2498But his seraphic self!
2499An altered look about the hills;
2500A Tyrian light the village fills;
2501A wider sunrise in the dawn;
2502A deeper twilight on the lawn;
2503A print of a vermilion foot;
2504A purple finger on the slope;
2505A flippant fly upon the pane;
2506A spider at his trade again;
2507An added strut in chanticleer;
2508A flower expected everywhere;
2509An axe shrill singing in the woods;
2510Fern-odors on untravelled roads, --
2511All this, and more I cannot tell,
2512A furtive look you know as well,
2513And Nicodemus' mystery
2514Receives its annual reply.
2515"Whose are the little beds," I asked,
2516"Which in the valleys lie?"
2517Some shook their heads, and others smiled,
2518And no one made reply.
2519"Perhaps they did not hear," I said;
2520"I will inquire again.
2521Whose are the beds, the tiny beds
2522So thick upon the plain?"
2523"'T is daisy in the shortest;
2524A little farther on,
2525Nearest the door to wake the first,
2526Little leontodon.
2527"'T is iris, sir, and aster,
2528Anemone and bell,
2529Batschia in the blanket red,
2530And chubby daffodil."
2531Meanwhile at many cradles
2532Her busy foot she plied,
2533Humming the quaintest lullaby
2534That ever rocked a child.
2535"Hush! Epigea wakens! --
2536The crocus stirs her lids,
2537Rhodora's cheek is crimson, --
2538She's dreaming of the woods."
2539Then, turning from them, reverent,
2540"Their bed-time 't is," she said;
2541"The bumble-bees will wake them
2542When April woods are red."
2543Pigmy seraphs gone astray,
2544Velvet people from Vevay,
2545Belles from some lost summer day,
2546Bees' exclusive coterie.
2547Paris could not lay the fold
2548Belted down with emerald;
2549Venice could not show a cheek
2550Of a tint so lustrous meek.
2551Never such an ambuscade
2552As of brier and leaf displayed
2553For my little damask maid.
2554I had rather wear her grace
2555Than an earl's distinguished face;
2556I had rather dwell like her
2557Than be Duke of Exeter
2558Royalty enough for me
2559To subdue the bumble-bee!
2560To hear an oriole sing
2561May be a common thing,
2562Or only a divine.
2563It is not of the bird
2564Who sings the same, unheard,
2565As unto crowd.
2566The fashion of the ear
2567Attireth that it hear
2568In dun or fair.
2569So whether it be rune,
2570Or whether it be none,
2571Is of within;
2572The "tune is in the tree,"
2573The sceptic showeth me;
2574"No, sir! In thee!"
2575One of the ones that Midas touched,
2576Who failed to touch us all,
2577Was that confiding prodigal,
2578The blissful oriole.
2579So drunk, he disavows it
2580With badinage divine;
2581So dazzling, we mistake him
2582For an alighting mine.
2583A pleader, a dissembler,
2584An epicure, a thief, --
2585Betimes an oratorio,
2586An ecstasy in chief;
2587The Jesuit of orchards,
2588He cheats as he enchants
2589Of an entire attar
2590For his decamping wants.
2591The splendor of a Burmah,
2592The meteor of birds,
2593Departing like a pageant
2594Of ballads and of bards.
2595I never thought that Jason sought
2596For any golden fleece;
2597But then I am a rural man,
2598With thoughts that make for peace.
2599But if there were a Jason,
2600Tradition suffer me
2601Behold his lost emolument
2602Upon the apple-tree.
2603I dreaded that first robin so,
2604But he is mastered now,
2605And I 'm accustomed to him grown, --
2606He hurts a little, though.
2607I thought if I could only live
2608Till that first shout got by,
2609Not all pianos in the woods
2610Had power to mangle me.
2611I dared not meet the daffodils,
2612For fear their yellow gown
2613Would pierce me with a fashion
2614So foreign to my own.
2615I wished the grass would hurry,
2616So when 't was time to see,
2617He 'd be too tall, the tallest one
2618Could stretch to look at me.
2619I could not bear the bees should come,
2620I wished they 'd stay away
2621In those dim countries where they go:
2622What word had they for me?
2623They 're here, though; not a creature failed,
2624No blossom stayed away
2625In gentle deference to me,
2626The Queen of Calvary.
2627Each one salutes me as he goes,
2628And I my childish plumes
2629Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment
2630Of their unthinking drums.
2631A route of evanescence
2632With a revolving wheel;
2633A resonance of emerald,
2634A rush of cochineal;
2635And every blossom on the bush
2636Adjusts its tumbled head, --
2637The mail from Tunis, probably,
2638An easy morning's ride.
2639The skies can't keep their secret!
2640They tell it to the hills --
2641The hills just tell the orchards --
2642And they the daffodils!
2643A bird, by chance, that goes that way
2644Soft overheard the whole.
2645If I should bribe the little bird,
2646Who knows but she would tell?
2647I think I won't, however,
2648It's finer not to know;
2649If summer were an axiom,
2650What sorcery had snow?
2651So keep your secret, Father!
2652I would not, if I could,
2653Know what the sapphire fellows do,
2654In your new-fashioned world!
2655Who robbed the woods,
2656The trusting woods?
2657The unsuspecting trees
2658Brought out their burrs and mosses
2659His fantasy to please.
2660He scanned their trinkets, curious,
2661He grasped, he bore away.
2662What will the solemn hemlock,
2663What will the fir-tree say?
2664Two butterflies went out at noon
2665And waltzed above a stream,
2666Then stepped straight through the firmament
2667And rested on a beam;
2668And then together bore away
2669Upon a shining sea, --
2670Though never yet, in any port,
2671Their coming mentioned be.
2672If spoken by the distant bird,
2673If met in ether sea
2674By frigate or by merchantman,
2675Report was not to me.
2676I started early, took my dog,
2677And visited the sea;
2678The mermaids in the basement
2679Came out to look at me,
2680And frigates in the upper floor
2681Extended hempen hands,
2682Presuming me to be a mouse
2683Aground, upon the sands.
2684But no man moved me till the tide
2685Went past my simple shoe,
2686And past my apron and my belt,
2687And past my bodice too,
2688And made as he would eat me up
2689As wholly as a dew
2690Upon a dandelion's sleeve --
2691And then I started too.
2692And he -- he followed close behind;
2693I felt his silver heel
2694Upon my ankle, -- then my shoes
2695Would overflow with pearl.
2696Until we met the solid town,
2697No man he seemed to know;
2698And bowing with a mighty look
2699At me, the sea withdrew.
2700Arcturus is his other name, --
2701I'd rather call him star!
2702It's so unkind of science
2703To go and interfere!
2704I pull a flower from the woods, --
2705A monster with a glass
2706Computes the stamens in a breath,
2707And has her in a class.
2708Whereas I took the butterfly
2709Aforetime in my hat,
2710He sits erect in cabinets,
2711The clover-bells forgot.
2712What once was heaven, is zenith now.
2713Where I proposed to go
2714When time's brief masquerade was done,
2715Is mapped, and charted too!
2716What if the poles should frisk about
2717And stand upon their heads!
2718I hope I 'm ready for the worst,
2719Whatever prank betides!
2720Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven 's changed!
2721I hope the children there
2722Won't be new-fashioned when I come,
2723And laugh at me, and stare!
2724I hope the father in the skies
2725Will lift his little girl, --
2726Old-fashioned, naughty, everything, --
2727Over the stile of pearl!
2728An awful tempest mashed the air,
2729The clouds were gaunt and few;
2730A black, as of a spectre's cloak,
2731Hid heaven and earth from view.
2732The creatures chuckled on the roofs
2733And whistled in the air,
2734And shook their fists and gnashed their teeth.
2735And swung their frenzied hair.
2736The morning lit, the birds arose;
2737The monster's faded eyes
2738Turned slowly to his native coast,
2739And peace was Paradise!
2740An everywhere of silver,
2741With ropes of sand
2742To keep it from effacing
2743The track called land.
2744A bird came down the walk:
2745He did not know I saw;
2746He bit an angle-worm in halves
2747And ate the fellow, raw.
2748And then he drank a dew
2749From a convenient grass,
2750And then hopped sidewise to the wall
2751To let a beetle pass.
2752He glanced with rapid eyes
2753That hurried all abroad, --
2754They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
2755He stirred his velvet head
2756Like one in danger; cautious,
2757I offered him a crumb,
2758And he unrolled his feathers
2759And rowed him softer home
2760Than oars divide the ocean,
2761Too silver for a seam,
2762Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
2763Leap, plashless, as they swim.
2764A narrow fellow in the grass
2765Occasionally rides;
2766You may have met him, -- did you not,
2767His notice sudden is.
2768The grass divides as with a comb,
2769A spotted shaft is seen;
2770And then it closes at your feet
2771And opens further on.
2772He likes a boggy acre,
2773A floor too cool for corn.
2774Yet when a child, and barefoot,
2775I more than once, at morn,
2776Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
2777Unbraiding in the sun, --
2778When, stooping to secure it,
2779It wrinkled, and was gone.
2780Several of nature's people
2781I know, and they know me;
2782I feel for them a transport
2783Of cordiality;
2784But never met this fellow,
2785Attended or alone,
2786Without a tighter breathing,
2787And zero at the bone.
2788The mushroom is the elf of plants,
2789At evening it is not;
2790At morning in a truffled hut
2791It stops upon a spot
2792As if it tarried always;
2793And yet its whole career
2794Is shorter than a snake's delay,
2795And fleeter than a tare.
2796'T is vegetation's juggler,
2797The germ of alibi;
2798Doth like a bubble antedate,
2799And like a bubble hie.
2800I feel as if the grass were pleased
2801To have it intermit;
2802The surreptitious scion
2803Of summer's circumspect.
2804Had nature any outcast face,
2805Could she a son contemn,
2806Had nature an Iscariot,
2807That mushroom, -- it is him.
2808There came a wind like a bugle;
2809It quivered through the grass,
2810And a green chill upon the heat
2811So ominous did pass
2812We barred the windows and the doors
2813As from an emerald ghost;
2814The doom's electric moccason
2815That very instant passed.
2816On a strange mob of panting trees,
2817And fences fled away,
2818And rivers where the houses ran
2819The living looked that day.
2820The bell within the steeple wild
2821The flying tidings whirled.
2822How much can come
2823And much can go,
2824And yet abide the world!
2825A spider sewed at night
2826Without a light
2827Upon an arc of white.
2828If ruff it was of dame
2829Or shroud of gnome,
2830Himself, himself inform.
2831Of immortality
2832His strategy
2833Was physiognomy.
2834I know a place where summer strives
2835With such a practised frost,
2836She each year leads her daisies back,
2837Recording briefly, "Lost."
2838But when the south wind stirs the pools
2839And struggles in the lanes,
2840Her heart misgives her for her vow,
2841And she pours soft refrains
2842Into the lap of adamant,
2843And spices, and the dew,
2844That stiffens quietly to quartz,
2845Upon her amber shoe.
2846The one that could repeat the summer day
2847Were greater than itself, though he
2848Minutest of mankind might be.
2849And who could reproduce the sun,
2850At period of going down --
2851The lingering and the stain, I mean --
2852When Orient has been outgrown,
2853And Occident becomes unknown,
2854His name remain.
2855The wind tapped like a tired man,
2856And like a host, "Come in,"
2857I boldly answered; entered then
2858My residence within
2859A rapid, footless guest,
2860To offer whom a chair
2861Were as impossible as hand
2862A sofa to the air.
2863No bone had he to bind him,
2864His speech was like the push
2865Of numerous humming-birds at once
2866From a superior bush.
2867His countenance a billow,
2868His fingers, if he pass,
2869Let go a music, as of tunes
2870Blown tremulous in glass.
2871He visited, still flitting;
2872Then, like a timid man,
2873Again he tapped -- 't was flurriedly --
2874And I became alone.
2875Nature rarer uses yellow
2876    Than another hue;
2877Saves she all of that for sunsets, --
2878    Prodigal of blue,
2879Spending scarlet like a woman,
2880    Yellow she affords
2881Only scantly and selectly,
2882    Like a lover's words.
2883The leaves, like women, interchange
2884   Sagacious confidence;
2885Somewhat of nods, and somewhat of
2886   Portentous inference,
2887The parties in both cases
2888   Enjoining secrecy, --
2889Inviolable compact
2890   To notoriety.
2891How happy is the little stone
2892That rambles in the road alone,
2893And doesn't care about careers,
2894And exigencies never fears;
2895Whose coat of elemental brown
2896A passing universe put on;
2897And independent as the sun,
2898Associates or glows alone,
2899Fulfilling absolute decree
2900In casual simplicity.
2901It sounded as if the streets were running,
2902And then the streets stood still.
2903Eclipse was all we could see at the window,
2904And awe was all we could feel.
2905By and by the boldest stole out of his covert,
2906To see if time was there.
2907Nature was in her beryl apron,
2908Mixing fresher air.
2909The rat is the concisest tenant.
2910He pays no rent, --
2911Repudiates the obligation,
2912On schemes intent.
2913Balking our wit
2914To sound or circumvent,
2915Hate cannot harm
2916A foe so reticent.
2917Neither decree
2918Prohibits him,
2919Lawful as
2920Equilibrium.
2921Frequently the woods are pink,
2922Frequently are brown;
2923Frequently the hills undress
2924Behind my native town.
2925Oft a head is crested
2926I was wont to see,
2927And as oft a cranny
2928Where it used to be.
2929And the earth, they tell me,
2930On its axis turned, --
2931Wonderful rotation
2932By but twelve performed!
2933The wind begun to rock the grass
2934With threatening tunes and low, --
2935He flung a menace at the earth,
2936A menace at the sky.
2937The leaves unhooked themselves from trees
2938And started all abroad;
2939The dust did scoop itself like hands
2940And throw away the road.
2941The wagons quickened on the streets,
2942The thunder hurried slow;
2943The lightning showed a yellow beak,
2944And then a livid claw.
2945The birds put up the bars to nests,
2946The cattle fled to barns;
2947There came one drop of giant rain,
2948And then, as if the hands
2949That held the dams had parted hold,
2950The waters wrecked the sky,
2951But overlooked my father's house,
2952Just quartering a tree.
2953South winds jostle them,
2954Bumblebees come,
2955Hover, hesitate,
2956Drink, and are gone.
2957Butterflies pause
2958On their passage Cashmere;
2959I, softly plucking,
2960Present them here!
2961Where ships of purple gently toss
2962On seas of daffodil,
2963Fantastic sailors mingle,
2964And then -- the wharf is still.
2965She sweeps with many-colored brooms,
2966And leaves the shreds behind;
2967Oh, housewife in the evening west,
2968Come back, and dust the pond!
2969You dropped a purple ravelling in,
2970You dropped an amber thread;
2971And now you 've littered all the East
2972With duds of emerald!
2973And still she plies her spotted brooms,
2974And still the aprons fly,
2975Till brooms fade softly into stars --
2976And then I come away.
2977Like mighty footlights burned the red
2978At bases of the trees, --
2979The far theatricals of day
2980Exhibiting to these.
2981'T was universe that did applaud
2982While, chiefest of the crowd,
2983Enabled by his royal dress,
2984Myself distinguished God.
2985Bring me the sunset in a cup,
2986Reckon the morning's flagons up,
2987    And say how many dew;
2988Tell me how far the morning leaps,
2989Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
2990    Who spun the breadths of blue!
2991Write me how many notes there be
2992In the new robin's ecstasy
2993    Among astonished boughs;
2994How many trips the tortoise makes,
2995How many cups the bee partakes, --
2996    The debauchee of dews!
2997Also, who laid the rainbow's piers,
2998Also, who leads the docile spheres
2999    By withes of supple blue?
3000Whose fingers string the stalactite,
3001Who counts the wampum of the night,
3002    To see that none is due?
3003Who built this little Alban house
3004And shut the windows down so close
3005    My spirit cannot see?
3006Who 'll let me out some gala day,
3007With implements to fly away,
3008    Passing pomposity?
3009Blazing in gold and quenching in purple,
3010Leaping like leopards to the sky,
3011Then at the feet of the old horizon
3012Laying her spotted face, to die;
3013Stooping as low as the otter's window,
3014Touching the roof and tinting the barn,
3015Kissing her bonnet to the meadow, --
3016And the juggler of day is gone!
3017Farther in summer than the birds,
3018Pathetic from the grass,
3019A minor nation celebrates
3020Its unobtrusive mass.
3021No ordinance is seen,
3022So gradual the grace,
3023A pensive custom it becomes,
3024Enlarging loneliness.
3025Antiquest felt at noon
3026When August, burning low,
3027Calls forth this spectral canticle,
3028Repose to typify.
3029Remit as yet no grace,
3030No furrow on the glow,
3031Yet a druidic difference
3032Enhances nature now.
3033As imperceptibly as grief
3034The summer lapsed away, --
3035Too imperceptible, at last,
3036To seem like perfidy.
3037A quietness distilled,
3038As twilight long begun,
3039Or Nature, spending with herself
3040Sequestered afternoon.
3041The dusk drew earlier in,
3042The morning foreign shone, --
3043A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
3044As guest who would be gone.
3045And thus, without a wing,
3046Or service of a keel,
3047Our summer made her light escape
3048Into the beautiful.
3049It can't be summer, -- that got through;
3050It 's early yet for spring;
3051There 's that long town of white to cross
3052Before the blackbirds sing.
3053It can't be dying, -- it's too rouge, --
3054The dead shall go in white.
3055So sunset shuts my question down
3056With clasps of chrysolite.
3057The gentian weaves her fringes,
3058The maple's loom is red.
3059My departing blossoms
3060Obviate parade.
3061A brief, but patient illness,
3062An hour to prepare;
3063And one, below this morning,
3064Is where the angels are.
3065It was a short procession, --
3066The bobolink was there,
3067An aged bee addressed us,
3068And then we knelt in prayer.
3069We trust that she was willing, --
3070We ask that we may be.
3071Summer, sister, seraph,
3072Let us go with thee!
3073In the name of the bee
3074And of the butterfly
3075And of the breeze, amen!
3076God made a little gentian;
3077It tried to be a rose
3078And failed, and all the summer laughed.
3079But just before the snows
3080There came a purple creature
3081That ravished all the hill;
3082And summer hid her forehead,
3083And mockery was still.
3084The frosts were her condition;
3085The Tyrian would not come
3086Until the North evoked it.
3087"Creator! shall I bloom?"
3088Besides the autumn poets sing,
3089A few prosaic days
3090A little this side of the snow
3091And that side of the haze.
3092A few incisive mornings,
3093A few ascetic eyes, --
3094Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod,
3095And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.
3096Still is the bustle in the brook,
3097Sealed are the spicy valves;
3098Mesmeric fingers softly touch
3099The eyes of many elves.
3100Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
3101My sentiments to share.
3102Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
3103Thy windy will to bear!
3104It sifts from leaden sieves,
3105It powders all the wood,
3106It fills with alabaster wool
3107The wrinkles of the road.
3108It makes an even face
3109Of mountain and of plain, --
3110Unbroken forehead from the east
3111Unto the east again.
3112It reaches to the fence,
3113It wraps it, rail by rail,
3114Till it is lost in fleeces;
3115It flings a crystal veil
3116On stump and stack and stem, --
3117The summer's empty room,
3118Acres of seams where harvests were,
3119Recordless, but for them.
3120It ruffles wrists of posts,
3121As ankles of a queen, --
3122Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
3123Denying they have been.
3124No brigadier throughout the year
3125So civic as the jay.
3126A neighbor and a warrior too,
3127With shrill felicity
3128Pursuing winds that censure us
3129A February day,
3130The brother of the universe
3131Was never blown away.
3132The snow and he are intimate;
3133I 've often seen them play
3134When heaven looked upon us all
3135With such severity,
3136I felt apology were due
3137To an insulted sky,
3138Whose pompous frown was nutriment
3139To their temerity.
3140The pillow of this daring head
3141Is pungent evergreens;
3142His larder -- terse and militant --
3143Unknown, refreshing things;
3144His character a tonic,
3145His future a dispute;
3146Unfair an immortality
3147That leaves this neighbor out.
3148Let down the bars, O Death!
3149The tired flocks come in
3150Whose bleating ceases to repeat,
3151Whose wandering is done.
3152Thine is the stillest night,
3153Thine the securest fold;
3154Too near thou art for seeking thee,
3155Too tender to be told.
3156Going to heaven!
3157I don't know when,
3158Pray do not ask me how, --
3159Indeed, I 'm too astonished
3160To think of answering you!
3161Going to heaven! --
3162How dim it sounds!
3163And yet it will be done
3164As sure as flocks go home at night
3165Unto the shepherd's arm!
3166Perhaps you 're going too!
3167Who knows?
3168If you should get there first,
3169Save just a little place for me
3170Close to the two I lost!
3171The smallest "robe" will fit me,
3172And just a bit of "crown;"
3173For you know we do not mind our dress
3174When we are going home.
3175I 'm glad I don't believe it,
3176For it would stop my breath,
3177And I 'd like to look a little more
3178At such a curious earth!
3179I am glad they did believe it
3180Whom I have never found
3181Since the mighty autumn afternoon
3182I left them in the ground.
3183At least to pray is left, is left.
3184O Jesus! in the air
3185I know not which thy chamber is, --
3186I 'm knocking everywhere.
3187Thou stirrest earthquake in the South,
3188And maelstrom in the sea;
3189Say, Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
3190Hast thou no arm for me?
3191Step lightly on this narrow spot!
3192The broadest land that grows
3193Is not so ample as the breast
3194These emerald seams enclose.
3195Step lofty; for this name is told
3196As far as cannon dwell,
3197Or flag subsist, or fame export
3198Her deathless syllable.
3199Morns like these we parted;
3200Noons like these she rose,
3201Fluttering first, then firmer,
3202To her fair repose.
3203Never did she lisp it,
3204And 't was not for me;
3205She was mute from transport,
3206I, from agony!
3207Till the evening, nearing,
3208One the shutters drew --
3209Quick! a sharper rustling!
3210And this linnet flew!
3211A death-blow is a life-blow to some
3212Who, till they died, did not alive become;
3213Who, had they lived, had died, but when
3214They died, vitality begun.
3215I read my sentence steadily,
3216Reviewed it with my eyes,
3217To see that I made no mistake
3218In its extremest clause, --
3219The date, and manner of the shame;
3220And then the pious form
3221That "God have mercy" on the soul
3222The jury voted him.
3223I made my soul familiar
3224With her extremity,
3225That at the last it should not be
3226A novel agony,
3227But she and Death, acquainted,
3228Meet tranquilly as friends,
3229Salute and pass without a hint --
3230And there the matter ends.
3231I have not told my garden yet,
3232Lest that should conquer me;
3233I have not quite the strength now
3234To break it to the bee.
3235I will not name it in the street,
3236For shops would stare, that I,
3237So shy, so very ignorant,
3238Should have the face to die.
3239The hillsides must not know it,
3240Where I have rambled so,
3241Nor tell the loving forests
3242The day that I shall go,
3243Nor lisp it at the table,
3244Nor heedless by the way
3245Hint that within the riddle
3246One will walk to-day!
3247They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
3248    Like petals from a rose,
3249When suddenly across the June
3250    A wind with fingers goes.
3251They perished in the seamless grass, --
3252    No eye could find the place;
3253But God on his repealless list
3254    Can summon every face.
3255The only ghost I ever saw
3256Was dressed in mechlin, -- so;
3257He wore no sandal on his foot,
3258And stepped like flakes of snow.
3259His gait was soundless, like the bird,
3260But rapid, like the roe;
3261His fashions quaint, mosaic,
3262Or, haply, mistletoe.
3263His conversation seldom,
3264His laughter like the breeze
3265That dies away in dimples
3266Among the pensive trees.
3267Our interview was transient,--
3268Of me, himself was shy;
3269And God forbid I look behind
3270Since that appalling day!
3271Some, too fragile for winter winds,
3272The thoughtful grave encloses, --
3273Tenderly tucking them in from frost
3274Before their feet are cold.
3275Never the treasures in her nest
3276The cautious grave exposes,
3277Building where schoolboy dare not look
3278And sportsman is not bold.
3279This covert have all the children
3280Early aged, and often cold, --
3281Sparrows unnoticed by the Father;
3282Lambs for whom time had not a fold.
3283As by the dead we love to sit,
3284Become so wondrous dear,
3285As for the lost we grapple,
3286Though all the rest are here, --
3287In broken mathematics
3288We estimate our prize,
3289Vast, in its fading ratio,
3290To our penurious eyes!
3291Death sets a thing significant
3292The eye had hurried by,
3293Except a perished creature
3294Entreat us tenderly
3295To ponder little workmanships
3296In crayon or in wool,
3297With "This was last her fingers did,"
3298Industrious until
3299The thimble weighed too heavy,
3300The stitches stopped themselves,
3301And then 't was put among the dust
3302Upon the closet shelves.
3303A book I have, a friend gave,
3304Whose pencil, here and there,
3305Had notched the place that pleased him, --
3306At rest his fingers are.
3307Now, when I read, I read not,
3308For interrupting tears
3309Obliterate the etchings
3310Too costly for repairs.
3311I went to heaven, --
3312'T was a small town,
3313Lit with a ruby,
3314Lathed with down.
3315Stiller than the fields
3316At the full dew,
3317Beautiful as pictures
3318No man drew.
3319People like the moth,
3320Of mechlin, frames,
3321Duties of gossamer,
3322And eider names.
3323Almost contented
3324I could be
3325'Mong such unique
3326Society.
3327Their height in heaven comforts not,
3328Their glory nought to me;
3329'T was best imperfect, as it was;
3330I 'm finite, I can't see.
3331The house of supposition,
3332The glimmering frontier
3333That skirts the acres of perhaps,
3334To me shows insecure.
3335The wealth I had contented me;
3336If 't was a meaner size,
3337Then I had counted it until
3338It pleased my narrow eyes
3339Better than larger values,
3340However true their show;
3341This timid life of evidence
3342Keeps pleading, "I don't know."
3343There is a shame of nobleness
3344Confronting sudden pelf, --
3345A finer shame of ecstasy
3346Convicted of itself.
3347A best disgrace a brave man feels,
3348Acknowledged of the brave, --
3349One more "Ye Blessed" to be told;
3350But this involves the grave.
3351Triumph may be of several kinds.
3352There 's triumph in the room
3353When that old imperator, Death,
3354By faith is overcome.
3355There 's triumph of the finer mind
3356When truth, affronted long,
3357Advances calm to her supreme,
3358Her God her only throng.
3359A triumph when temptation's bribe
3360Is slowly handed back,
3361One eye upon the heaven renounced
3362And one upon the rack.
3363Severer triumph, by himself
3364Experienced, who can pass
3365Acquitted from that naked bar,
3366Jehovah's countenance!
3367Pompless no life can pass away;
3368     The lowliest career
3369To the same pageant wends its way
3370     As that exalted here.
3371How cordial is the mystery!
3372     The hospitable pall
3373A "this way" beckons spaciously, --
3374     A miracle for all!
3375I noticed people disappeared,
3376When but a little child, --
3377Supposed they visited remote,
3378Or settled regions wild.
3379Now know I they both visited
3380And settled regions wild,
3381But did because they died, -- a fact
3382Withheld the little child!
3383I had no cause to be awake,
3384My best was gone to sleep,
3385And morn a new politeness took,
3386And failed to wake them up,
3387But called the others clear,
3388And passed their curtains by.
3389Sweet morning, when I over-sleep,
3390Knock, recollect, for me!
3391I looked at sunrise once,
3392And then I looked at them,
3393And wishfulness in me arose
3394For circumstance the same.
3395'T was such an ample peace,
3396It could not hold a sigh, --
3397'T was Sabbath with the bells divorced,
3398'T was sunset all the day.
3399So choosing but a gown
3400And taking but a prayer,
3401The only raiment I should need,
3402I struggled, and was there.
3403If anybody's friend be dead,
3404It 's sharpest of the theme
3405The thinking how they walked alive,
3406At such and such a time.
3407Their costume, of a Sunday,
3408Some manner of the hair, --
3409A prank nobody knew but them,
3410Lost, in the sepulchre.
3411How warm they were on such a day:
3412You almost feel the date,
3413So short way off it seems; and now,
3414They 're centuries from that.
3415How pleased they were at what you said;
3416You try to touch the smile,
3417And dip your fingers in the frost:
3418When was it, can you tell,
3419You asked the company to tea,
3420Acquaintance, just a few,
3421And chatted close with this grand thing
3422That don't remember you?
3423Past bows and invitations,
3424Past interview, and vow,
3425Past what ourselves can estimate, --
3426That makes the quick of woe!
3427Our journey had advanced;
3428Our feet were almost come
3429To that odd fork in Being's road,
3430Eternity by term.
3431Our pace took sudden awe,
3432Our feet reluctant led.
3433Before were cities, but between,
3434The forest of the dead.
3435Retreat was out of hope, --
3436Behind, a sealed route,
3437Eternity's white flag before,
3438And God at every gate.
3439Ample make this bed.
3440Make this bed with awe;
3441In it wait till judgment break
3442Excellent and fair.
3443Be its mattress straight,
3444Be its pillow round;
3445Let no sunrise' yellow noise
3446Interrupt this ground.
3447On such a night, or such a night,
3448Would anybody care
3449If such a little figure
3450Slipped quiet from its chair,
3451So quiet, oh, how quiet!
3452That nobody might know
3453But that the little figure
3454Rocked softer, to and fro?
3455On such a dawn, or such a dawn,
3456Would anybody sigh
3457That such a little figure
3458Too sound asleep did lie
3459For chanticleer to wake it, --
3460Or stirring house below,
3461Or giddy bird in orchard,
3462Or early task to do?
3463There was a little figure plump
3464For every little knoll,
3465Busy needles, and spools of thread,
3466And trudging feet from school.
3467Playmates, and holidays, and nuts,
3468And visions vast and small.
3469Strange that the feet so precious charged
3470Should reach so small a goal!
3471Essential oils are wrung:
3472The attar from the rose
3473Is not expressed by suns alone,
3474It is the gift of screws.
3475The general rose decays;
3476But this, in lady's drawer,
3477Makes summer when the lady lies
3478In ceaseless rosemary.
3479I lived on dread; to those who know
3480The stimulus there is
3481In danger, other impetus
3482Is numb and vital-less.
3483As 't were a spur upon the soul,
3484A fear will urge it where
3485To go without the spectre's aid
3486Were challenging despair.
3487If I should die,
3488And you should live,
3489And time should gurgle on,
3490And morn should beam,
3491And noon should burn,
3492As it has usual done;
3493If birds should build as early,
3494And bees as bustling go, --
3495One might depart at option
3496From enterprise below!
3497'T is sweet to know that stocks will stand
3498When we with daisies lie,
3499That commerce will continue,
3500And trades as briskly fly.
3501It makes the parting tranquil
3502And keeps the soul serene,
3503That gentlemen so sprightly
3504Conduct the pleasing scene!
3505Her final summer was it,
3506And yet we guessed it not;
3507If tenderer industriousness
3508Pervaded her, we thought
3509A further force of life
3510Developed from within, --
3511When Death lit all the shortness up,
3512And made the hurry plain.
3513We wondered at our blindness, --
3514When nothing was to see
3515But her Carrara guide-post, --
3516At our stupidity,
3517When, duller than our dulness,
3518The busy darling lay,
3519So busy was she, finishing,
3520So leisurely were we!
3521One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
3522One need not be a house;
3523The brain has corridors surpassing
3524Material place.
3525Far safer, of a midnight meeting
3526External ghost,
3527Than an interior confronting
3528That whiter host.
3529Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
3530The stones achase,
3531Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
3532In lonesome place.
3533Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
3534Should startle most;
3535Assassin, hid in our apartment,
3536Be horror's least.
3537The prudent carries a revolver,
3538He bolts the door,
3539O'erlooking a superior spectre
3540More near.
3541She died, -- this was the way she died;
3542And when her breath was done,
3543Took up her simple wardrobe
3544And started for the sun.
3545Her little figure at the gate
3546The angels must have spied,
3547Since I could never find her
3548Upon the mortal side.
3549Wait till the majesty of Death
3550Invests so mean a brow!
3551Almost a powdered footman
3552Might dare to touch it now!
3553Wait till in everlasting robes
3554This democrat is dressed,
3555Then prate about "preferment"
3556And "station" and the rest!
3557Around this quiet courtier
3558Obsequious angels wait!
3559Full royal is his retinue,
3560Full purple is his state!
3561A lord might dare to lift the hat
3562To such a modest clay,
3563Since that my Lord, "the Lord of lords"
3564Receives unblushingly!
3565Went up a year this evening!
3566I recollect it well!
3567Amid no bells nor bravos
3568The bystanders will tell!
3569Cheerful, as to the village,
3570Tranquil, as to repose,
3571Chastened, as to the chapel,
3572This humble tourist rose.
3573Did not talk of returning,
3574Alluded to no time
3575When, were the gales propitious,
3576We might look for him;
3577Was grateful for the roses
3578In life's diverse bouquet,
3579Talked softly of new species
3580To pick another day.
3581Beguiling thus the wonder,
3582The wondrous nearer drew;
3583Hands bustled at the moorings --
3584The crowd respectful grew.
3585Ascended from our vision
3586To countenances new!
3587A difference, a daisy,
3588Is all the rest I knew!
3589Taken from men this morning,
3590Carried by men to-day,
3591Met by the gods with banners
3592Who marshalled her away.
3593One little maid from playmates,
3594One little mind from school, --
3595There must be guests in Eden;
3596All the rooms are full.
3597Far as the east from even,
3598Dim as the border star, --
3599Courtiers quaint, in kingdoms,
3600Our departed are.
3601What inn is this
3602Where for the night
3603Peculiar traveller comes?
3604Who is the landlord?
3605Where the maids?
3606Behold, what curious rooms!
3607No ruddy fires on the hearth,
3608No brimming tankards flow.
3609Necromancer, landlord,
3610Who are these below?
3611It was not death, for I stood up,
3612And all the dead lie down;
3613It was not night, for all the bells
3614Put out their tongues, for noon.
3615It was not frost, for on my flesh
3616I felt siroccos crawl, --
3617Nor fire, for just my marble feet
3618Could keep a chancel cool.
3619And yet it tasted like them all;
3620The figures I have seen
3621Set orderly, for burial,
3622Reminded me of mine,
3623As if my life were shaven
3624And fitted to a frame,
3625And could not breathe without a key;
3626And 't was like midnight, some,
3627When everything that ticked has stopped,
3628And space stares, all around,
3629Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
3630Repeal the beating ground.
3631But most like chaos, -- stopless, cool, --
3632Without a chance or spar,
3633Or even a report of land
3634To justify despair.
3635I should not dare to leave my friend,
3636Because -- because if he should die
3637While I was gone, and I -- too late --
3638Should reach the heart that wanted me;
3639If I should disappoint the eyes
3640That hunted, hunted so, to see,
3641And could not bear to shut until
3642They "noticed" me -- they noticed me;
3643If I should stab the patient faith
3644So sure I 'd come -- so sure I 'd come,
3645It listening, listening, went to sleep
3646Telling my tardy name, --
3647My heart would wish it broke before,
3648Since breaking then, since breaking then,
3649Were useless as next morning's sun,
3650Where midnight frosts had lain!
3651Great streets of silence led away
3652To neighborhoods of pause;
3653Here was no notice, no dissent,
3654No universe, no laws.
3655By clocks 't was morning, and for night
3656The bells at distance called;
3657But epoch had no basis here,
3658For period exhaled.
3659A throe upon the features
3660A hurry in the breath,
3661An ecstasy of parting
3662Denominated "Death," --
3663An anguish at the mention,
3664Which, when to patience grown,
3665I 've known permission given
3666To rejoin its own.
3667Of tribulation these are they
3668Denoted by the white;
3669The spangled gowns, a lesser rank
3670Of victors designate.
3671All these did conquer; but the ones
3672Who overcame most times
3673Wear nothing commoner than snow,
3674No ornament but palms.
3675Surrender is a sort unknown
3676On this superior soil;
3677Defeat, an outgrown anguish,
3678Remembered as the mile
3679Our panting ankle barely gained
3680When night devoured the road;
3681But we stood whispering in the house,
3682And all we said was "Saved"!
3683I think just how my shape will rise
3684When I shall be forgiven,
3685Till hair and eyes and timid head
3686Are out of sight, in heaven.
3687I think just how my lips will weigh
3688With shapeless, quivering prayer
3689That you, so late, consider me,
3690The sparrow of your care.
3691I mind me that of anguish sent,
3692Some drifts were moved away
3693Before my simple bosom broke, --
3694And why not this, if they?
3695And so, until delirious borne
3696I con that thing, -- "forgiven," --
3697Till with long fright and longer trust
3698I drop my heart, unshriven!
3699After a hundred years
3700Nobody knows the place, --
3701Agony, that enacted there,
3702Motionless as peace.
3703Weeds triumphant ranged,
3704Strangers strolled and spelled
3705At the lone orthography
3706Of the elder dead.
3707Winds of summer fields
3708Recollect the way, --
3709Instinct picking up the key
3710Dropped by memory.
3711Lay this laurel on the one
3712Too intrinsic for renown.
3713Laurel! veil your deathless tree, --
3714Him you chasten, that is he!
3715THIRD SERIES
3716'T is little I could care for pearls
3717   Who own the ample sea;
3718Or brooches, when the Emperor
3719   With rubies pelteth me;
3720Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines;
3721   Or diamonds, when I see
3722A diadem to fit a dome
3723   Continual crowning me.
3724Superiority to fate
3725   Is difficult to learn.
3726'T is not conferred by any,
3727   But possible to earn
3728A pittance at a time,
3729   Until, to her surprise,
3730The soul with strict economy
3731   Subsists till Paradise.
3732Hope is a subtle glutton;
3733   He feeds upon the fair;
3734And yet, inspected closely,
3735   What abstinence is there!
3736His is the halcyon table
3737   That never seats but one,
3738And whatsoever is consumed
3739   The same amounts remain.
3740Forbidden fruit a flavor has
3741   That lawful orchards mocks;
3742How luscious lies the pea within
3743   The pod that Duty locks!
3744Heaven is what I cannot reach!
3745   The apple on the tree,
3746Provided it do hopeless hang,
3747   That 'heaven' is, to me.
3748The color on the cruising cloud,
3749   The interdicted ground
3750Behind the hill, the house behind, --
3751   There Paradise is found!
3752A word is dead
3753When it is said,
3754   Some say.
3755I say it just
3756Begins to live
3757   That day.
3758To venerate the simple days
3759   Which lead the seasons by,
3760Needs but to remember
3761   That from you or me
3762They may take the trifle
3763   Termed mortality!
3764To invest existence with a stately air,
3765Needs but to remember
3766   That the acorn there
3767Is the egg of forests
3768   For the upper air!
3769It's such a little thing to weep,
3770   So short a thing to sigh;
3771And yet by trades the size of these
3772   We men and women die!
3773Drowning is not so pitiful
3774   As the attempt to rise.
3775Three times, 't is said, a sinking man
3776   Comes up to face the skies,
3777And then declines forever
3778   To that abhorred abode
3779Where hope and he part company, --
3780   For he is grasped of God.
3781The Maker's cordial visage,
3782   However good to see,
3783Is shunned, we must admit it,
3784   Like an adversity.
3785How still the bells in steeples stand,
3786   Till, swollen with the sky,
3787They leap upon their silver feet
3788   In frantic melody!
3789If the foolish call them 'flowers,'
3790   Need the wiser tell?
3791If the savans 'classify' them,
3792   It is just as well!
3793Those who read the Revelations
3794   Must not criticise
3795Those who read the same edition
3796   With beclouded eyes!
3797Could we stand with that old Moses
3798   Canaan denied, --
3799Scan, like him, the stately landscape
3800   On the other side, --
3801Doubtless we should deem superfluous
3802   Many sciences
3803Not pursued by learnèd angels
3804   In scholastic skies!
3805Low amid that glad Belles lettres
3806   Grant that we may stand,
3807Stars, amid profound Galaxies,
3808   At that grand 'Right hand'!
3809Could mortal lip divine
3810   The undeveloped freight
3811Of a delivered syllable,
3812   'T would crumble with the weight.
3813My life closed twice before its close;
3814   It yet remains to see
3815If Immortality unveil
3816   A third event to me,
3817So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
3818   As these that twice befell.
3819Parting is all we know of heaven,
3820   And all we need of hell.
3821We never know how high we are
3822   Till we are called to rise;
3823And then, if we are true to plan,
3824   Our statures touch the skies.
3825The heroism we recite
3826   Would be a daily thing,
3827Did not ourselves the cubits warp
3828   For fear to be a king.
3829While I was fearing it, it came,
3830   But came with less of fear,
3831Because that fearing it so long
3832   Had almost made it dear.
3833There is a fitting a dismay,
3834   A fitting a despair.
3835'Tis harder knowing it is due,
3836   Than knowing it is here.
3837The trying on the utmost,
3838   The morning it is new,
3839Is terribler than wearing it
3840   A whole existence through.
3841There is no frigate like a book
3842   To take us lands away,
3843Nor any coursers like a page
3844   Of prancing poetry.
3845This traverse may the poorest take
3846   Without oppress of toll;
3847How frugal is the chariot
3848   That bears a human soul!
3849Who has not found the heaven below
3850   Will fail of it above.
3851God's residence is next to mine,
3852   His furniture is love.
3853A face devoid of love or grace,
3854   A hateful, hard, successful face,
3855A face with which a stone
3856   Would feel as thoroughly at ease
3857As were they old acquaintances, --
3858   First time together thrown.
3859I had a guinea golden;
3860   I lost it in the sand,
3861And though the sum was simple,
3862   And pounds were in the land,
3863Still had it such a value
3864   Unto my frugal eye,
3865That when I could not find it
3866   I sat me down to sigh.
3867I had a crimson robin
3868   Who sang full many a day,
3869But when the woods were painted
3870   He, too, did fly away.
3871Time brought me other robins, --
3872   Their ballads were the same, --
3873Still for my missing troubadour
3874   I kept the 'house at hame.'
3875I had a star in heaven;
3876   One Pleiad was its name,
3877And when I was not heeding
3878   It wandered from the same.
3879And though the skies are crowded,
3880   And all the night ashine,
3881I do not care about it,
3882   Since none of them are mine.
3883My story has a moral:
3884   I have a missing friend, --
3885Pleiad its name, and robin,
3886   And guinea in the sand, --
3887And when this mournful ditty,
3888   Accompanied with tear,
3889Shall meet the eye of traitor
3890   In country far from here,
3891Grant that repentance solemn
3892   May seize upon his mind,
3893And he no consolation
3894   Beneath the sun may find.
3895From all the jails the boys and girls
3896   Ecstatically leap, --
3897Beloved, only afternoon
3898   That prison doesn't keep.
3899They storm the earth and stun the air,
3900   A mob of solid bliss.
3901Alas! that frowns could lie in wait
3902   For such a foe as this!
3903Few get enough, -- enough is one;
3904   To that ethereal throng
3905Have not each one of us the right
3906   To stealthily belong?
3907Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
3908   Too sullied for the hell
3909To which the law entitled him.
3910   As nature's curtain fell
3911The one who bore him tottered in,
3912   For this was woman's son.
3913''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped;
3914   Oh, what a livid boon!
3915I felt a clearing in my mind
3916   As if my brain had split;
3917I tried to match it, seam by seam,
3918   But could not make them fit.
3919The thought behind I strove to join
3920   Unto the thought before,
3921But sequence ravelled out of reach
3922   Like balls upon a floor.
3923The reticent volcano keeps
3924   His never slumbering plan;
3925Confided are his projects pink
3926   To no precarious man.
3927If nature will not tell the tale
3928   Jehovah told to her,
3929Can human nature not survive
3930   Without a listener?
3931Admonished by her buckled lips
3932   Let every babbler be.
3933The only secret people keep
3934   Is Immortality.
3935If recollecting were forgetting,
3936   Then I remember not;
3937And if forgetting, recollecting,
3938   How near I had forgot!
3939And if to miss were merry,
3940   And if to mourn were gay,
3941How very blithe the fingers
3942   That gathered these to-day!
3943The farthest thunder that I heard
3944   Was nearer than the sky,
3945And rumbles still, though torrid noons
3946   Have lain their missiles by.
3947The lightning that preceded it
3948   Struck no one but myself,
3949But I would not exchange the bolt
3950   For all the rest of life.
3951Indebtedness to oxygen
3952   The chemist may repay,
3953But not the obligation
3954   To electricity.
3955It founds the homes and decks the days,
3956   And every clamor bright
3957Is but the gleam concomitant
3958   Of that waylaying light.
3959The thought is quiet as a flake, --
3960   A crash without a sound;
3961How life's reverberation
3962   Its explanation found!
3963On the bleakness of my lot
3964   Bloom I strove to raise.
3965Late, my acre of a rock
3966   Yielded grape and maize.
3967Soil of flint if steadfast tilled
3968   Will reward the hand;
3969Seed of palm by Lybian sun
3970   Fructified in sand.
3971A door just opened on a street --
3972   I, lost, was passing by --
3973An instant's width of warmth disclosed,
3974   And wealth, and company.
3975The door as sudden shut, and I,
3976   I, lost, was passing by, --
3977Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
3978   Enlightening misery.
3979Are friends delight or pain?
3980   Could bounty but remain
3981Riches were good.
3982But if they only stay
3983Bolder to fly away,
3984   Riches are sad.
3985Ashes denote that fire was;
3986   Respect the grayest pile
3987For the departed creature's sake
3988   That hovered there awhile.
3989Fire exists the first in light,
3990   And then consolidates, --
3991Only the chemist can disclose
3992   Into what carbonates.
3993Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
3994   She felled -- he did not fall --
3995Impaled him on her fiercest stakes --
3996   He neutralized them all.
3997She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
3998   But, when her worst was done,
3999And he, unmoved, regarded her,
4000   Acknowledged him a man.
4001Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
4002   For the one ship that struts the shore
4003Many's the gallant, overwhelmed creature
4004   Nodding in navies nevermore.
4005I measure every grief I meet
4006   With analytic eyes;
4007I wonder if it weighs like mine,
4008   Or has an easier size.
4009I wonder if they bore it long,
4010   Or did it just begin?
4011I could not tell the date of mine,
4012   It feels so old a pain.
4013I wonder if it hurts to live,
4014   And if they have to try,
4015And whether, could they choose between,
4016   They would not rather die.
4017I wonder if when years have piled --
4018   Some thousands -- on the cause
4019Of early hurt, if such a lapse
4020   Could give them any pause;
4021Or would they go on aching still
4022   Through centuries above,
4023Enlightened to a larger pain
4024   By contrast with the love.
4025The grieved are many, I am told;
4026   The reason deeper lies, --
4027Death is but one and comes but once,
4028   And only nails the eyes.
4029There's grief of want, and grief of cold, --
4030   A sort they call 'despair;'
4031There's banishment from native eyes,
4032   In sight of native air.
4033And though I may not guess the kind
4034   Correctly, yet to me
4035A piercing comfort it affords
4036   In passing Calvary,
4037To note the fashions of the cross,
4038   Of those that stand alone,
4039Still fascinated to presume
4040   That some are like my own.
4041I have a king who does not speak;
4042So, wondering, thro' the hours meek
4043   I trudge the day away,--
4044Half glad when it is night and sleep,
4045If, haply, thro' a dream to peep
4046   In parlors shut by day.
4047And if I do, when morning comes,
4048It is as if a hundred drums
4049   Did round my pillow roll,
4050And shouts fill all my childish sky,
4051And bells keep saying 'victory'
4052   From steeples in my soul!
4053And if I don't, the little Bird
4054Within the Orchard is not heard,
4055   And I omit to pray,
4056'Father, thy will be done' to-day,
4057For my will goes the other way,
4058   And it were perjury!
4059It dropped so low in my regard
4060   I heard it hit the ground,
4061And go to pieces on the stones
4062   At bottom of my mind;
4063Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less
4064   Than I reviled myself
4065For entertaining plated wares
4066   Upon my silver shelf.
4067To lose one's faith surpasses
4068   The loss of an estate,
4069Because estates can be
4070   Replenished, -- faith cannot.
4071Inherited with life,
4072   Belief but once can be;
4073Annihilate a single clause,
4074   And Being's beggary.
4075I had a daily bliss
4076   I half indifferent viewed,
4077Till sudden I perceived it stir, --
4078   It grew as I pursued,
4079Till when, around a crag,
4080   It wasted from my sight,
4081Enlarged beyond my utmost scope,
4082   I learned its sweetness right.
4083I worked for chaff, and earning wheat
4084   Was haughty and betrayed.
4085What right had fields to arbitrate
4086   In matters ratified?
4087I tasted wheat, -- and hated chaff,
4088   And thanked the ample friend;
4089Wisdom is more becoming viewed
4090   At distance than at hand.
4091Life, and Death, and Giants
4092   Such as these, are still.
4093Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill,
4094Beetle at the candle,
4095   Or a fife's small fame,
4096Maintain by accident
4097   That they proclaim.
4098Our lives are Swiss, --
4099   So still, so cool,
4100   Till, some odd afternoon,
4101The Alps neglect their curtains,
4102   And we look farther on.
4103Italy stands the other side,
4104   While, like a guard between,
4105The solemn Alps,
4106The siren Alps,
4107   Forever intervene!
4108Remembrance has a rear and front, --
4109   'T is something like a house;
4110It has a garret also
4111   For refuse and the mouse,
4112Besides, the deepest cellar
4113   That ever mason hewed;
4114Look to it, by its fathoms
4115   Ourselves be not pursued.
4116To hang our head ostensibly,
4117   And subsequent to find
4118That such was not the posture
4119   Of our immortal mind,
4120Affords the sly presumption
4121   That, in so dense a fuzz,
4122You, too, take cobweb attitudes
4123   Upon a plane of gauze!
4124The brain is wider than the sky,
4125   For, put them side by side,
4126The one the other will include
4127   With ease, and you beside.
4128The brain is deeper than the sea,
4129   For, hold them, blue to blue,
4130The one the other will absorb,
4131   As sponges, buckets do.
4132The brain is just the weight of God,
4133   For, lift them, pound for pound,
4134And they will differ, if they do,
4135   As syllable from sound.
4136The bone that has no marrow;
4137   What ultimate for that?
4138It is not fit for table,
4139   For beggar, or for cat.
4140A bone has obligations,
4141   A being has the same;
4142A marrowless assembly
4143   Is culpabler than shame.
4144But how shall finished creatures
4145   A function fresh obtain? --
4146Old Nicodemus' phantom
4147   Confronting us again!
4148The past is such a curious creature,
4149   To look her in the face
4150A transport may reward us,
4151   Or a disgrace.
4152Unarmed if any meet her,
4153   I charge him, fly!
4154Her rusty ammunition
4155   Might yet reply!
4156To help our bleaker parts
4157   Salubrious hours are given,
4158Which if they do not fit for earth
4159   Drill silently for heaven.
4160What soft, cherubic creatures
4161   These gentlewomen are!
4162One would as soon assault a plush
4163   Or violate a star.
4164Such dimity convictions,
4165   A horror so refined
4166Of freckled human nature,
4167   Of Deity ashamed, --
4168It's such a common glory,
4169   A fisherman's degree!
4170Redemption, brittle lady,
4171   Be so, ashamed of thee.
4172Who never wanted, -- maddest joy
4173   Remains to him unknown:
4174The banquet of abstemiousness
4175   Surpasses that of wine.
4176Within its hope, though yet ungrasped
4177   Desire's perfect goal,
4178No nearer, lest reality
4179   Should disenthrall thy soul.
4180It might be easier
4181   To fail with land in sight,
4182Than gain my blue peninsula
4183   To perish of delight.
4184You cannot put a fire out;
4185   A thing that can ignite
4186Can go, itself, without a fan
4187   Upon the slowest night.
4188You cannot fold a flood
4189   And put it in a drawer, --
4190Because the winds would find it out,
4191   And tell your cedar floor.
4192A modest lot, a fame petite,
4193   A brief campaign of sting and sweet
4194   Is plenty! Is enough!
4195A sailor's business is the shore,
4196   A soldier's -- balls. Who asketh more
4197Must seek the neighboring life!
4198Is bliss, then, such abyss
4199I must not put my foot amiss
4200For fear I spoil my shoe?
4201I'd rather suit my foot
4202Than save my boot,
4203For yet to buy another pair
4204Is possible
4205At any fair.
4206But bliss is sold just once;
4207The patent lost
4208None buy it any more.
4209I stepped from plank to plank
4210   So slow and cautiously;
4211The stars about my head I felt,
4212   About my feet the sea.
4213I knew not but the next
4214   Would be my final inch, --
4215This gave me that precarious gait
4216   Some call experience.
4217One day is there of the series
4218   Termed Thanksgiving day,
4219Celebrated part at table,
4220   Part in memory.
4221Neither patriarch nor pussy,
4222   I dissect the play;
4223Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
4224   Reflex holiday.
4225Had there been no sharp subtraction
4226   From the early sum,
4227Not an acre or a caption
4228   Where was once a room,
4229Not a mention, whose small pebble
4230   Wrinkled any bay, --
4231Unto such, were such assembly,
4232   'T were Thanksgiving day.
4233Softened by Time's consummate plush,
4234   How sleek the woe appears
4235That threatened childhood's citadel
4236   And undermined the years!
4237Bisected now by bleaker griefs,
4238   We envy the despair
4239That devastated childhood's realm,
4240   So easy to repair.
4241Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,
4242   Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,
4243Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,
4244   Not to partake thy passion, my humility.
4245My worthiness is all my doubt,
4246   His merit all my fear,
4247Contrasting which, my qualities
4248   Do lowlier appear;
4249Lest I should insufficient prove
4250   For his beloved need,
4251The chiefest apprehension
4252   Within my loving creed.
4253So I, the undivine abode
4254   Of his elect content,
4255Conform my soul as 't were a church
4256   Unto her sacrament.
4257Love is anterior to life,
4258   Posterior to death,
4259Initial of creation, and
4260   The exponent of breath.
4261One blessing had I, than the rest
4262   So larger to my eyes
4263That I stopped gauging, satisfied,
4264   For this enchanted size.
4265It was the limit of my dream,
4266   The focus of my prayer, --
4267A perfect, paralyzing bliss
4268   Contented as despair.
4269I knew no more of want or cold,
4270   Phantasms both become,
4271For this new value in the soul,
4272   Supremest earthly sum.
4273The heaven below the heaven above
4274   Obscured with ruddier hue.
4275Life's latitude leant over-full;
4276   The judgment perished, too.
4277Why joys so scantily disburse,
4278   Why Paradise defer,
4279Why floods are served to us in bowls, --
4280   I speculate no more.
4281When roses cease to bloom, dear,
4282   And violets are done,
4283When bumble-bees in solemn flight
4284   Have passed beyond the sun,
4285The hand that paused to gather
4286   Upon this summer's day
4287Will idle lie, in Auburn, --
4288   Then take my flower, pray!
4289Summer for thee grant I may be
4290   When summer days are flown!
4291Thy music still when whippoorwill
4292   And oriole are done!
4293For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb
4294   And sow my blossoms o'er!
4295Pray gather me, Anemone,
4296   Thy flower forevermore!
4297Split the lark and you'll find the music,
4298   Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled,
4299Scantily dealt to the summer morning,
4300   Saved for your ear when lutes be old.
4301Loose the flood, you shall find it patent,
4302   Gush after gush, reserved for you;
4303Scarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas,
4304   Now, do you doubt that your bird was true?
4305To lose thee, sweeter than to gain
4306   All other hearts I knew.
4307'T is true the drought is destitute,
4308   But then I had the dew!
4309The Caspian has its realms of sand,
4310   Its other realm of sea;
4311Without the sterile perquisite
4312   No Caspian could be.
4313   Poor little heart!
4314   Did they forget thee?
4315Then dinna care! Then dinna care!
4316   Proud little heart!
4317   Did they forsake thee?
4318Be debonair! Be debonair!
4319   Frail little heart!
4320   I would not break thee:
4321Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me?
4322   Gay little heart!
4323   Like morning glory
4324Thou'll wilted be; thou'll wilted be!
4325There is a word
4326   Which bears a sword
4327   Can pierce an armed man.
4328It hurls its barbed syllables,--
4329   At once is mute again.
4330But where it fell
4331The saved will tell
4332   On patriotic day,
4333Some epauletted brother
4334   Gave his breath away.
4335Wherever runs the breathless sun,
4336   Wherever roams the day,
4337There is its noiseless onset,
4338   There is its victory!
4339Behold the keenest marksman!
4340   The most accomplished shot!
4341Time's sublimest target
4342   Is a soul 'forgot'!
4343I've got an arrow here;
4344   Loving the hand that sent it,
4345I the dart revere.
4346Fell, they will say, in 'skirmish'!
4347   Vanquished, my soul will know,
4348By but a simple arrow
4349   Sped by an archer's bow.
4350He fumbles at your spirit
4351   As players at the keys
4352Before they drop full music on;
4353   He stuns you by degrees,
4354Prepares your brittle substance
4355   For the ethereal blow,
4356By fainter hammers, further heard,
4357   Then nearer, then so slow
4358Your breath has time to straighten,
4359   Your brain to bubble cool, --
4360Deals one imperial thunderbolt
4361   That scalps your naked soul.
4362Heart, we will forget him!
4363   You and I, to-night!
4364You may forget the warmth he gave,
4365   I will forget the light.
4366When you have done, pray tell me,
4367   That I my thoughts may dim;
4368Haste! lest while you're lagging,
4369   I may remember him!
4370Father, I bring thee not myself, --
4371   That were the little load;
4372I bring thee the imperial heart
4373   I had not strength to hold.
4374The heart I cherished in my own
4375   Till mine too heavy grew,
4376Yet strangest, heavier since it went,
4377   Is it too large for you?
4378We outgrow love like other things
4379   And put it in the drawer,
4380Till it an antique fashion shows
4381   Like costumes grandsires wore.
4382Not with a club the heart is broken,
4383     Nor with a stone;
4384A whip, so small you could not see it.
4385     I've known
4386To lash the magic creature
4387     Till it fell,
4388Yet that whip's name too noble
4389     Then to tell.
4390Magnanimous of bird
4391     By boy descried,
4392To sing unto the stone
4393     Of which it died.
4394My friend must be a bird,
4395     Because it flies!
4396Mortal my friend must be,
4397     Because it dies!
4398Barbs has it, like a bee.
4399Ah, curious friend,
4400     Thou puzzlest me!
4401He touched me, so I live to know
4402That such a day, permitted so,
4403   I groped upon his breast.
4404It was a boundless place to me,
4405And silenced, as the awful sea
4406   Puts minor streams to rest.
4407And now, I'm different from before,
4408As if I breathed superior air,
4409   Or brushed a royal gown;
4410My feet, too, that had wandered so,
4411My gypsy face transfigured now
4412   To tenderer renown.
4413Let me not mar that perfect dream
4414   By an auroral stain,
4415But so adjust my daily night
4416   That it will come again.
4417I live with him, I see his face;
4418   I go no more away
4419For visitor, or sundown;
4420   Death's single privacy,
4421The only one forestalling mine,
4422   And that by right that he
4423Presents a claim invisible,
4424   No wedlock granted me.
4425I live with him, I hear his voice,
4426   I stand alive to-day
4427To witness to the certainty
4428   Of immortality
4429Taught me by Time, -- the lower way,
4430   Conviction every day, --
4431That life like this is endless,
4432   Be judgment what it may.
4433I envy seas whereon he rides,
4434   I envy spokes of wheels
4435Of chariots that him convey,
4436   I envy speechless hills
4437That gaze upon his journey;
4438   How easy all can see
4439What is forbidden utterly
4440   As heaven, unto me!
4441I envy nests of sparrows
4442   That dot his distant eaves,
4443The wealthy fly upon his pane,
4444   The happy, happy leaves
4445That just abroad his window
4446   Have summer's leave to be,
4447The earrings of Pizarro
4448   Could not obtain for me.
4449I envy light that wakes him,
4450   And bells that boldly ring
4451To tell him it is noon abroad, --
4452   Myself his noon could bring,
4453Yet interdict my blossom
4454   And abrogate my bee,
4455Lest noon in everlasting night
4456   Drop Gabriel and me.
4457A solemn thing it was, I said,
4458   A woman white to be,
4459And wear, if God should count me fit,
4460   Her hallowed mystery.
4461A timid thing to drop a life
4462   Into the purple well,
4463Too plummetless that it come back
4464   Eternity until.
4465The springtime's pallid landscape
4466   Will glow like bright bouquet,
4467Though drifted deep in parian
4468   The village lies to-day.
4469The lilacs, bending many a year,
4470   With purple load will hang;
4471The bees will not forget the tune
4472   Their old forefathers sang.
4473The rose will redden in the bog,
4474   The aster on the hill
4475Her everlasting fashion set,
4476   And covenant gentians frill,
4477Till summer folds her miracle
4478   As women do their gown,
4479Or priests adjust the symbols
4480   When sacrament is done.
4481She slept beneath a tree
4482   Remembered but by me.
4483I touched her cradle mute;
4484She recognized the foot,
4485Put on her carmine suit, --
4486   And see!
4487A light exists in spring
4488   Not present on the year
4489At any other period.
4490   When March is scarcely here
4491A color stands abroad
4492   On solitary hills
4493That science cannot overtake,
4494   But human nature feels.
4495It waits upon the lawn;
4496   It shows the furthest tree
4497Upon the furthest slope we know;
4498   It almost speaks to me.
4499Then, as horizons step,
4500   Or noons report away,
4501Without the formula of sound,
4502   It passes, and we stay:
4503A quality of loss
4504   Affecting our content,
4505As trade had suddenly encroached
4506   Upon a sacrament.
4507A lady red upon the hill
4508   Her annual secret keeps;
4509A lady white within the field
4510   In placid lily sleeps!
4511The tidy breezes with their brooms
4512   Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!
4513Prithee, my pretty housewives!
4514   Who may expected be?
4515The neighbors do not yet suspect!
4516   The woods exchange a smile --
4517Orchard, and buttercup, and bird --
4518   In such a little while!
4519And yet how still the landscape stands,
4520   How nonchalant the wood,
4521As if the resurrection
4522   Were nothing very odd!
4523Dear March, come in!
4524How glad I am!
4525I looked for you before.
4526Put down your hat --
4527You must have walked --
4528How out of breath you are!
4529Dear March, how are you?
4530And the rest?
4531Did you leave Nature well?
4532Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
4533I have so much to tell!
4534I got your letter, and the birds';
4535The maples never knew
4536That you were coming, -- I declare,
4537How red their faces grew!
4538But, March, forgive me --
4539And all those hills
4540You left for me to hue;
4541There was no purple suitable,
4542You took it all with you.
4543Who knocks? That April!
4544Lock the door!
4545I will not be pursued!
4546He stayed away a year, to call
4547When I am occupied.
4548But trifles look so trivial
4549As soon as you have come,
4550That blame is just as dear as praise
4551And praise as mere as blame.
4552We like March, his shoes are purple,
4553   He is new and high;
4554Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
4555   Makes he forest dry;
4556Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
4557   And begets her spot.
4558Stands the sun so close and mighty
4559   That our minds are hot.
4560News is he of all the others;
4561   Bold it were to die
4562With the blue-birds buccaneering
4563   On his British sky.
4564Not knowing when the dawn will come
4565   I open every door;
4566Or has it feathers like a bird,
4567   Or billows like a shore?
4568A murmur in the trees to note,
4569   Not loud enough for wind;
4570A star not far enough to seek,
4571   Nor near enough to find;
4572A long, long yellow on the lawn,
4573   A hubbub as of feet;
4574Not audible, as ours to us,
4575   But dapperer, more sweet;
4576A hurrying home of little men
4577   To houses unperceived, --
4578All this, and more, if I should tell,
4579   Would never be believed.
4580Of robins in the trundle bed
4581   How many I espy
4582Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings,
4583   Although I heard them try!
4584But then I promised ne'er to tell;
4585   How could I break my word?
4586So go your way and I'll go mine, --
4587   No fear you'll miss the road.
4588Morning is the place for dew,
4589   Corn is made at noon,
4590After dinner light for flowers,
4591   Dukes for setting sun!
4592To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
4593   The bushes they were bells;
4594I could not find a privacy
4595   From Nature's sentinels.
4596In cave if I presumed to hide,
4597   The walls began to tell;
4598Creation seemed a mighty crack
4599   To make me visible.
4600A sepal, petal, and a thorn
4601   Upon a common summer's morn,
4602A flash of dew, a bee or two,
4603A breeze
4604A caper in the trees, --
4605   And I'm a rose!
4606High from the earth I heard a bird;
4607   He trod upon the trees
4608As he esteemed them trifles,
4609   And then he spied a breeze,
4610And situated softly
4611   Upon a pile of wind
4612Which in a perturbation
4613   Nature had left behind.
4614A joyous-going fellow
4615   I gathered from his talk,
4616Which both of benediction
4617   And badinage partook,
4618Without apparent burden,
4619   I learned, in leafy wood
4620He was the faithful father
4621   Of a dependent brood;
4622And this untoward transport
4623   His remedy for care, --
4624A contrast to our respites.
4625   How different we are!
4626The spider as an artist
4627   Has never been employed
4628Though his surpassing merit
4629   Is freely certified
4630By every broom and Bridget
4631   Throughout a Christian land.
4632Neglected son of genius,
4633   I take thee by the hand.
4634What mystery pervades a well!
4635   The water lives so far,
4636Like neighbor from another world
4637   Residing in a jar.
4638The grass does not appear afraid;
4639   I often wonder he
4640Can stand so close and look so bold
4641   At what is dread to me.
4642Related somehow they may be, --
4643   The sedge stands next the sea,
4644Where he is floorless, yet of fear
4645   No evidence gives he.
4646But nature is a stranger yet;
4647   The ones that cite her most
4648Have never passed her haunted house,
4649   Nor simplified her ghost.
4650To pity those that know her not
4651   Is helped by the regret
4652That those who know her, know her less
4653   The nearer her they get.
4654To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --
4655One clover, and a bee,
4656And revery.
4657The revery alone will do
4658If bees are few.
4659It's like the light, --
4660   A fashionless delight
4661It's like the bee, --
4662   A dateless melody.
4663It's like the woods,
4664   Private like breeze,
4665Phraseless, yet it stirs
4666   The proudest trees.
4667It's like the morning, --
4668   Best when it's done, --
4669The everlasting clocks
4670   Chime noon.
4671A dew sufficed itself
4672   And satisfied a leaf,
4673And felt, 'how vast a destiny!
4674   How trivial is life!'
4675The sun went out to work,
4676   The day went out to play,
4677But not again that dew was seen
4678   By physiognomy.
4679Whether by day abducted,
4680   Or emptied by the sun
4681Into the sea, in passing,
4682   Eternally unknown.
4683His bill an auger is,
4684   His head, a cap and frill.
4685He laboreth at every tree, --
4686   A worm his utmost goal.
4687Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
4688   Until we meet a snake;
4689'T is then we sigh for houses,
4690   And our departure take
4691At that enthralling gallop
4692   That only childhood knows.
4693A snake is summer's treason,
4694   And guile is where it goes.
4695Could I but ride indefinite,
4696   As doth the meadow-bee,
4697And visit only where I liked,
4698   And no man visit me,
4699And flirt all day with buttercups,
4700   And marry whom I may,
4701And dwell a little everywhere,
4702   Or better, run away
4703With no police to follow,
4704   Or chase me if I do,
4705Till I should jump peninsulas
4706   To get away from you, --
4707I said, but just to be a bee
4708   Upon a raft of air,
4709And row in nowhere all day long,
4710   And anchor off the bar,--
4711What liberty! So captives deem
4712   Who tight in dungeons are.
4713The moon was but a chin of gold
4714   A night or two ago,
4715And now she turns her perfect face
4716   Upon the world below.
4717Her forehead is of amplest blond;
4718   Her cheek like beryl stone;
4719Her eye unto the summer dew
4720   The likest I have known.
4721Her lips of amber never part;
4722   But what must be the smile
4723Upon her friend she could bestow
4724   Were such her silver will!
4725And what a privilege to be
4726   But the remotest star!
4727For certainly her way might pass
4728   Beside your twinkling door.
4729Her bonnet is the firmament,
4730   The universe her shoe,
4731The stars the trinkets at her belt,
4732   Her dimities of blue.
4733The bat is dun with wrinkled wings
4734   Like fallow article,
4735And not a song pervades his lips,
4736   Or none perceptible.
4737His small umbrella, quaintly halved,
4738   Describing in the air
4739An arc alike inscrutable, --
4740   Elate philosopher!
4741Deputed from what firmament
4742   Of what astute abode,
4743Empowered with what malevolence
4744   Auspiciously withheld.
4745To his adroit Creator
4746   Ascribe no less the praise;
4747Beneficent, believe me,
4748   His eccentricities.
4749You've seen balloons set, haven't you?
4750   So stately they ascend
4751It is as swans discarded you
4752   For duties diamond.
4753Their liquid feet go softly out
4754   Upon a sea of blond;
4755They spurn the air as 't were too mean
4756   For creatures so renowned.
4757Their ribbons just beyond the eye,
4758   They struggle some for breath,
4759And yet the crowd applauds below;
4760   They would not encore death.
4761The gilded creature strains and spins,
4762   Trips frantic in a tree,
4763Tears open her imperial veins
4764   And tumbles in the sea.
4765The crowd retire with an oath
4766   The dust in streets goes down,
4767And clerks in counting-rooms observe,
4768   ''T was only a balloon.'
4769The cricket sang,
4770And set the sun,
4771And workmen finished, one by one,
4772   Their seam the day upon.
4773The low grass loaded with the dew,
4774The twilight stood as strangers do
4775With hat in hand, polite and new,
4776   To stay as if, or go.
4777A vastness, as a neighbor, came, --
4778A wisdom without face or name,
4779A peace, as hemispheres at home, --
4780   And so the night became.
4781Drab habitation of whom?
4782Tabernacle or tomb,
4783Or dome of worm,
4784Or porch of gnome,
4785Or some elf's catacomb?
4786A sloop of amber slips away
4787   Upon an ether sea,
4788And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
4789   The son of ecstasy.
4790Of bronze and blaze
4791   The north, to-night!
4792   So adequate its forms,
4793So preconcerted with itself,
4794   So distant to alarms, --
4795An unconcern so sovereign
4796   To universe, or me,
4797It paints my simple spirit
4798   With tints of majesty,
4799Till I take vaster attitudes,
4800   And strut upon my stem,
4801Disdaining men and oxygen,
4802   For arrogance of them.
4803My splendors are menagerie;
4804   But their competeless show
4805Will entertain the centuries
4806   When I am, long ago,
4807An island in dishonored grass,
4808   Whom none but daisies know.
4809How the old mountains drip with sunset,
4810   And the brake of dun!
4811How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
4812   By the wizard sun!
4813How the old steeples hand the scarlet,
4814   Till the ball is full, --
4815Have I the lip of the flamingo
4816   That I dare to tell?
4817Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,
4818   Touching all the grass
4819With a departing, sapphire feature,
4820   As if a duchess pass!
4821How a small dusk crawls on the village
4822   Till the houses blot;
4823And the odd flambeaux no men carry
4824   Glimmer on the spot!
4825Now it is night in nest and kennel,
4826   And where was the wood,
4827Just a dome of abyss is nodding
4828   Into solitude! --
4829These are the visions baffled Guido;
4830   Titian never told;
4831Domenichino dropped the pencil,
4832   Powerless to unfold.
4833The murmuring of bees has ceased;
4834   But murmuring of some
4835Posterior, prophetic,
4836   Has simultaneous come, --
4837The lower metres of the year,
4838   When nature's laugh is done, --
4839The Revelations of the book
4840   Whose Genesis is June.
4841This world is not conclusion;
4842   A sequel stands beyond,
4843Invisible, as music,
4844   But positive, as sound.
4845It beckons and it baffles;
4846   Philosophies don't know,
4847And through a riddle, at the last,
4848   Sagacity must go.
4849To guess it puzzles scholars;
4850   To gain it, men have shown
4851Contempt of generations,
4852   And crucifixion known.
4853We learn in the retreating
4854   How vast an one
4855Was recently among us.
4856   A perished sun
4857Endears in the departure
4858   How doubly more
4859Than all the golden presence
4860   It was before!
4861They say that 'time assuages,' --
4862   Time never did assuage;
4863An actual suffering strengthens,
4864   As sinews do, with age.
4865Time is a test of trouble,
4866   But not a remedy.
4867If such it prove, it prove too
4868   There was no malady.
4869We cover thee, sweet face.
4870   Not that we tire of thee,
4871But that thyself fatigue of us;
4872   Remember, as thou flee,
4873We follow thee until
4874   Thou notice us no more,
4875And then, reluctant, turn away
4876   To con thee o'er and o'er,
4877And blame the scanty love
4878   We were content to show,
4879Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold
4880   If thou would'st take it now.
4881That is solemn we have ended, --
4882   Be it but a play,
4883Or a glee among the garrets,
4884   Or a holiday,
4885Or a leaving home; or later,
4886   Parting with a world
4887We have understood, for better
4888   Still it be unfurled.
4889The stimulus, beyond the grave
4890   His countenance to see,
4891Supports me like imperial drams
4892   Afforded royally.
4893Given in marriage unto thee,
4894   Oh, thou celestial host!
4895Bride of the Father and the Son,
4896   Bride of the Holy Ghost!
4897Other betrothal shall dissolve,
4898   Wedlock of will decay;
4899Only the keeper of this seal
4900   Conquers mortality.
4901That such have died enables us
4902   The tranquiller to die;
4903That such have lived, certificate
4904   For immortality.
4905They won't frown always, -- some sweet day
4906   When I forget to tease,
4907They'll recollect how cold I looked,
4908   And how I just said 'please.'
4909Then they will hasten to the door
4910   To call the little child,
4911Who cannot thank them, for the ice
4912   That on her lisping piled.
4913It is an honorable thought,
4914   And makes one lift one's hat,
4915As one encountered gentlefolk
4916   Upon a daily street,
4917That we've immortal place,
4918   Though pyramids decay,
4919And kingdoms, like the orchard,
4920   Flit russetly away.
4921The distance that the dead have gone
4922   Does not at first appear;
4923Their coming back seems possible
4924   For many an ardent year.
4925And then, that we have followed them
4926   We more than half suspect,
4927So intimate have we become
4928   With their dear retrospect.
4929How dare the robins sing,
4930   When men and women hear
4931Who since they went to their account
4932   Have settled with the year! --
4933Paid all that life had earned
4934   In one consummate bill,
4935And now, what life or death can do
4936   Is immaterial.
4937Insulting is the sun
4938   To him whose mortal light,
4939Beguiled of immortality,
4940   Bequeaths him to the night.
4941In deference to him
4942   Extinct be every hum,
4943Whose garden wrestles with the dew,
4944   At daybreak overcome!
4945Death is like the insect
4946   Menacing the tree,
4947Competent to kill it,
4948   But decoyed may be.
4949Bait it with the balsam,
4950   Seek it with the knife,
4951Baffle, if it cost you
4952   Everything in life.
4953Then, if it have burrowed
4954   Out of reach of skill,
4955Ring the tree and leave it, --
4956   'T is the vermin's will.
4957'T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou
4958   No station in the day?
4959'T was not thy wont to hinder so, --
4960   Retrieve thine industry.
4961'T is noon, my little maid, alas!
4962   And art thou sleeping yet?
4963The lily waiting to be wed,
4964   The bee, dost thou forget?
4965My little maid, 't is night; alas,
4966   That night should be to thee
4967Instead of morning! Hadst thou broached
4968   Thy little plan to me,
4969Dissuade thee if I could not, sweet,
4970   I might have aided thee.
4971Each that we lose takes part of us;
4972   A crescent still abides,
4973Which like the moon, some turbid night,
4974   Is summoned by the tides.
4975Not any higher stands the grave
4976   For heroes than for men;
4977Not any nearer for the child
4978   Than numb three-score and ten.
4979This latest leisure equal lulls
4980   The beggar and his queen;
4981Propitiate this democrat
4982   By summer's gracious mien.
4983As far from pity as complaint,
4984   As cool to speech as stone,
4985As numb to revelation
4986   As if my trade were bone.
4987As far from time as history,
4988   As near yourself to-day
4989As children to the rainbow's scarf,
4990   Or sunset's yellow play
4991To eyelids in the sepulchre.
4992   How still the dancer lies,
4993While color's revelations break,
4994   And blaze the butterflies!
4995'T is whiter than an Indian pipe,
4996   'T is dimmer than a lace;
4997No stature has it, like a fog,
4998   When you approach the place.
4999Not any voice denotes it here,
5000   Or intimates it there;
5001A spirit, how doth it accost?
5002   What customs hath the air?
5003This limitless hyperbole
5004   Each one of us shall be;
5005'T is drama, if (hypothesis)
5006   It be not tragedy!
5007She laid her docile crescent down,
5008   And this mechanic stone
5009Still states, to dates that have forgot,
5010   The news that she is gone.
5011So constant to its stolid trust,
5012   The shaft that never knew,
5013It shames the constancy that fled
5014   Before its emblem flew.
5015Bless God, he went as soldiers,
5016   His musket on his breast;
5017Grant, God, he charge the bravest
5018   Of all the martial blest.
5019Please God, might I behold him
5020   In epauletted white,
5021I should not fear the foe then,
5022   I should not fear the fight.
5023Immortal is an ample word
5024   When what we need is by,
5025But when it leaves us for a time,
5026   'T is a necessity.
5027Of heaven above the firmest proof
5028   We fundamental know,
5029Except for its marauding hand,
5030   It had been heaven below.
5031Where every bird is bold to go,
5032   And bees abashless play,
5033The foreigner before he knocks
5034   Must thrust the tears away.
5035The grave my little cottage is,
5036   Where, keeping house for thee,
5037I make my parlor orderly,
5038   And lay the marble tea,
5039For two divided, briefly,
5040   A cycle, it may be,
5041Till everlasting life unite
5042   In strong society.
5043This was in the white of the year,
5044   That was in the green,
5045Drifts were as difficult then to think
5046   As daisies now to be seen.
5047Looking back is best that is left,
5048   Or if it be before,
5049Retrospection is prospect's half,
5050   Sometimes almost more.
5051Sweet hours have perished here;
5052   This is a mighty room;
5053Within its precincts hopes have played, --
5054   Now shadows in the tomb.
5055Me! Come! My dazzled face
5056In such a shining place!
5057Me! Hear! My foreign ear
5058The sounds of welcome near!
5059The saints shall meet
5060Our bashful feet.
5061My holiday shall be
5062That they remember me;
5063My paradise, the fame
5064That they pronounce my name.
5065From us she wandered now a year,
5066   Her tarrying unknown;
5067If wilderness prevent her feet,
5068   Or that ethereal zone
5069No eye hath seen and lived,
5070   We ignorant must be.
5071We only know what time of year
5072   We took the mystery.
5073I wish I knew that woman's name,
5074   So, when she comes this way,
5075To hold my life, and hold my ears,
5076   For fear I hear her say
5077She's 'sorry I am dead,' again,
5078   Just when the grave and I
5079Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, --
5080   Our only lullaby.
5081Bereaved of all, I went abroad,
5082   No less bereaved to be
5083Upon a new peninsula, --
5084   The grave preceded me,
5085Obtained my lodgings ere myself,
5086   And when I sought my bed,
5087The grave it was, reposed upon
5088   The pillow for my head.
5089I waked, to find it first awake,
5090   I rose, -- it followed me;
5091I tried to drop it in the crowd,
5092   To lose it in the sea,
5093In cups of artificial drowse
5094   To sleep its shape away, --
5095The grave was finished, but the spade
5096   Remained in memory.
5097I felt a funeral in my brain,
5098   And mourners, to and fro,
5099Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
5100   That sense was breaking through.
5101And when they all were seated,
5102   A service like a drum
5103Kept beating, beating, till I thought
5104   My mind was going numb.
5105And then I heard them lift a box,
5106   And creak across my soul
5107With those same boots of lead, again.
5108   Then space began to toll
5109As all the heavens were a bell,
5110   And Being but an ear,
5111And I and silence some strange race,
5112   Wrecked, solitary, here.
5113I meant to find her when I came;
5114   Death had the same design;
5115But the success was his, it seems,
5116   And the discomfit mine.
5117I meant to tell her how I longed
5118   For just this single time;
5119But Death had told her so the first,
5120   And she had hearkened him.
5121To wander now is my abode;
5122   To rest, -- to rest would be
5123A privilege of hurricane
5124   To memory and me.
5125I sing to use the waiting,
5126   My bonnet but to tie,
5127And shut the door unto my house;
5128   No more to do have I,
5129Till, his best step approaching,
5130   We journey to the day,
5131And tell each other how we sang
5132   To keep the dark away.
5133A sickness of this world it most occasions
5134   When best men die;
5135A wishfulness their far condition
5136   To occupy.
5137A chief indifference, as foreign
5138   A world must be
5139Themselves forsake contented,
5140   For Deity.
5141Superfluous were the sun
5142   When excellence is dead;
5143He were superfluous every day,
5144   For every day is said
5145That syllable whose faith
5146   Just saves it from despair,
5147And whose 'I'll meet you' hesitates
5148   If love inquire, 'Where?'
5149Upon his dateless fame
5150   Our periods may lie,
5151As stars that drop anonymous
5152   From an abundant sky.
5153So proud she was to die
5154   It made us all ashamed
5155That what we cherished, so unknown
5156   To her desire seemed.
5157So satisfied to go
5158   Where none of us should be,
5159Immediately, that anguish stooped
5160   Almost to jealousy.
5161Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,
5162   Then I am ready to go!
5163Just a look at the horses --
5164   Rapid! That will do!
5165Put me in on the firmest side,
5166   So I shall never fall;
5167For we must ride to the Judgment,
5168   And it's partly down hill.
5169But never I mind the bridges,
5170   And never I mind the sea;
5171Held fast in everlasting race
5172   By my own choice and thee.
5173Good-by to the life I used to live,
5174   And the world I used to know;
5175And kiss the hills for me, just once;
5176   Now I am ready to go!
5177The dying need but little, dear, --
5178   A glass of water's all,
5179A flower's unobtrusive face
5180   To punctuate the wall,
5181A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,
5182   And certainly that one
5183No color in the rainbow
5184   Perceives when you are gone.
5185There's something quieter than sleep
5186   Within this inner room!
5187It wears a sprig upon its breast,
5188   And will not tell its name.
5189Some touch it and some kiss it,
5190   Some chafe its idle hand;
5191It has a simple gravity
5192   I do not understand!
5193While simple-hearted neighbors
5194   Chat of the 'early dead,'
5195We, prone to periphrasis,
5196   Remark that birds have fled!
5197The soul should always stand ajar,
5198   That if the heaven inquire,
5199He will not be obliged to wait,
5200   Or shy of troubling her.
5201Depart, before the host has slid
5202   The bolt upon the door,
5203To seek for the accomplished guest, --
5204   Her visitor no more.
5205Three weeks passed since I had seen her, --
5206   Some disease had vexed;
5207'T was with text and village singing
5208   I beheld her next,
5209And a company -- our pleasure
5210   To discourse alone;
5211Gracious now to me as any,
5212   Gracious unto none.
5213Borne, without dissent of either,
5214   To the parish night;
5215Of the separated people
5216   Which are out of sight?
5217I breathed enough to learn the trick,
5218   And now, removed from air,
5219I simulate the breath so well,
5220   That one, to be quite sure
5221The lungs are stirless, must descend
5222   Among the cunning cells,
5223And touch the pantomime himself.
5224   How cool the bellows feels!
5225I wonder if the sepulchre
5226   Is not a lonesome way,
5227When men and boys, and larks and June
5228   Go down the fields to hay!
5229If tolling bell I ask the cause.
5230   'A soul has gone to God,'
5231I'm answered in a lonesome tone;
5232   Is heaven then so sad?
5233That bells should joyful ring to tell
5234   A soul had gone to heaven,
5235Would seem to me the proper way
5236   A good news should be given.
5237If I may have it when it's dead
5238   I will contented be;
5239If just as soon as breath is out
5240   It shall belong to me,
5241Until they lock it in the grave,
5242   'T is bliss I cannot weigh,
5243For though they lock thee in the grave,
5244   Myself can hold the key.
5245Think of it, lover! I and thee
5246   Permitted face to face to be;
5247After a life, a death we'll say, --
5248   For death was that, and this is thee.
5249Before the ice is in the pools,
5250   Before the skaters go,
5251Or any cheek at nightfall
5252   Is tarnished by the snow,
5253Before the fields have finished,
5254   Before the Christmas tree,
5255Wonder upon wonder
5256   Will arrive to me!
5257What we touch the hems of
5258   On a summer's day;
5259What is only walking
5260   Just a bridge away;
5261That which sings so, speaks so,
5262   When there's no one here, --
5263Will the frock I wept in
5264   Answer me to wear?
5265I heard a fly buzz when I died;
5266   The stillness round my form
5267Was like the stillness in the air
5268   Between the heaves of storm.
5269The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
5270   And breaths were gathering sure
5271For that last onset, when the king
5272   Be witnessed in his power.
5273I willed my keepsakes, signed away
5274   What portion of me I
5275Could make assignable, -- and then
5276   There interposed a fly,
5277With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
5278   Between the light and me;
5279And then the windows failed, and then
5280   I could not see to see.
5281Adrift! A little boat adrift!
5282   And night is coming down!
5283Will no one guide a little boat
5284   Unto the nearest town?
5285So sailors say, on yesterday,
5286   Just as the dusk was brown,
5287One little boat gave up its strife,
5288   And gurgled down and down.
5289But angels say, on yesterday,
5290   Just as the dawn was red,
5291One little boat o'erspent with gales
5292Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
5293   Exultant, onward sped!
5294There's been a death in the opposite house
5295   As lately as to-day.
5296I know it by the numb look
5297   Such houses have alway.
5298The neighbors rustle in and out,
5299   The doctor drives away.
5300A window opens like a pod,
5301   Abrupt, mechanically;
5302Somebody flings a mattress out, --
5303   The children hurry by;
5304They wonder if It died on that, --
5305   I used to when a boy.
5306The minister goes stiffly in
5307   As if the house were his,
5308And he owned all the mourners now,
5309   And little boys besides;
5310And then the milliner, and the man
5311   Of the appalling trade,
5312To take the measure of the house.
5313   There'll be that dark parade
5314Of tassels and of coaches soon;
5315   It's easy as a sign, --
5316The intuition of the news
5317   In just a country town.
5318We never know we go, -- when we are going
5319   We jest and shut the door;
5320Fate following behind us bolts it,
5321   And we accost no more.
5322It struck me every day
5323   The lightning was as new
5324As if the cloud that instant slit
5325   And let the fire through.
5326It burned me in the night,
5327   It blistered in my dream;
5328It sickened fresh upon my sight
5329   With every morning's beam.
5330I thought that storm was brief, --
5331   The maddest, quickest by;
5332But Nature lost the date of this,
5333   And left it in the sky.
5334Water is taught by thirst;
5335Land, by the oceans passed;
5336   Transport, by throe;
5337Peace, by its battles told;
5338Love, by memorial mould;
5339   Birds, by the snow.
5340We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act;
5341   And later, when we die,
5342A little water supplicate
5343   Of fingers going by.
5344It intimates the finer want,
5345   Whose adequate supply
5346Is that great water in the west
5347   Termed immortality.
5348A clock stopped -- not the mantel's;
5349   Geneva's farthest skill
5350Can't put the puppet bowing
5351   That just now dangled still.
5352An awe came on the trinket!
5353   The figures hunched with pain,
5354Then quivered out of decimals
5355   Into degreeless noon.
5356It will not stir for doctors,
5357   This pendulum of snow;
5358The shopman importunes it,
5359   While cool, concernless No
5360Nods from the gilded pointers,
5361   Nods from the seconds slim,
5362Decades of arrogance between
5363   The dial life and him.
5364All overgrown by cunning moss,
5365   All interspersed with weed,
5366The little cage of 'Currer Bell,'
5367   In quiet Haworth laid.
5368This bird, observing others,
5369   When frosts too sharp became,
5370Retire to other latitudes,
5371   Quietly did the same,
5372But differed in returning;
5373   Since Yorkshire hills are green,
5374Yet not in all the nests I meet
5375   Can nightingale be seen.
5376Gathered from many wanderings,
5377   Gethsemane can tell
5378Through what transporting anguish
5379   She reached the asphodel!
5380Soft fall the sounds of Eden
5381   Upon her puzzled ear;
5382Oh, what an afternoon for heaven,
5383   When 'Brontë' entered there!
5384A toad can die of light!
5385Death is the common right
5386   Of toads and men, --
5387Of earl and midge
5388The privilege.
5389   Why swagger then?
5390The gnat's supremacy
5391Is large as thine.
5392Far from love the Heavenly Father
5393   Leads the chosen child;
5394Oftener through realm of briar
5395   Than the meadow mild,
5396Oftener by the claw of dragon
5397   Than the hand of friend,
5398Guides the little one predestined
5399   To the native land.
5400A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
5401   That makes no show for dawn
5402By stretch of limb or stir of lid, --
5403   An independent one.
5404Was ever idleness like this?
5405   Within a hut of stone
5406To bask the centuries away
5407   Nor once look up for noon?
5408'T was just this time last year I died.
5409   I know I heard the corn,
5410When I was carried by the farms, --
5411   It had the tassels on.
5412I thought how yellow it would look
5413   When Richard went to mill;
5414And then I wanted to get out,
5415   But something held my will.
5416I thought just how red apples wedged
5417   The stubble's joints between;
5418And carts went stooping round the fields
5419   To take the pumpkins in.
5420I wondered which would miss me least,
5421   And when Thanksgiving came,
5422If father'd multiply the plates
5423   To make an even sum.
5424And if my stocking hung too high,
5425   Would it blur the Christmas glee,
5426That not a Santa Claus could reach
5427   The altitude of me?
5428But this sort grieved myself, and so
5429   I thought how it would be
5430When just this time, some perfect year,
5431   Themselves should come to me.
5432On this wondrous sea,
5433Sailing silently,
5434   Ho! pilot, ho!
5435Knowest thou the shore
5436Where no breakers roar,
5437   Where the storm is o'er?
5438In the silent west
5439Many sails at rest,
5440   Their anchors fast;
5441Thither I pilot thee, --
5442Land, ho! Eternity!
5443   Ashore at last!
5444 
5445