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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12241 ***
+
+POEMS
+
+by EMILY DICKINSON
+
+Third Series
+
+
+
+
+Edited by
+
+MABEL LOOMIS TODD
+
+
+
+
+
+    It's all I have to bring to-day,
+      This, and my heart beside,
+    This, and my heart, and all the fields,
+      And all the meadows wide.
+    Be sure you count, should I forget, --
+      Some one the sum could tell, --
+    This, and my heart, and all the bees
+      Which in the clover dwell.
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+The intellectual activity of Emily Dickinson was so great that a
+large and characteristic choice is still possible among her
+literary material, and this third volume of her verses is put
+forth in response to the repeated wish of the admirers of her
+peculiar genius. Much of Emily Dickinson's prose was rhythmic,
+--even rhymed, though frequently not set apart in lines.
+
+Also many verses, written as such, were sent to friends in
+letters; these were published in 1894, in the volumes of her
+_Letters_. It has not been necessary, however, to include them in
+this Series, and all have been omitted, except three or four
+exceptionally strong ones, as "A Book," and "With Flowers."
+
+There is internal evidence that many of the poems were simply
+spontaneous flashes of insight, apparently unrelated to outward
+circumstance. Others, however, had an obvious personal origin;
+for example, the verses "I had a Guinea golden," which seem to
+have been sent to some friend travelling in Europe, as a dainty
+reminder of letter-writing delinquencies. The surroundings in
+which any of Emily Dickinson's verses are known to have been
+written usually serve to explain them clearly; but in general the
+present volume is full of thoughts needing no interpretation to
+those who apprehend this scintillating spirit.
+
+                                        M. L. T.
+
+AMHERST, _October_, 1896.
+
+
+
+
+I. LIFE.
+
+
+POEMS.
+
+I.
+
+REAL RICHES.
+
+'T is little I could care for pearls
+  Who own the ample sea;
+Or brooches, when the Emperor
+  With rubies pelteth me;
+
+Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines;
+  Or diamonds, when I see
+A diadem to fit a dome
+  Continual crowning me.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+SUPERIORITY TO FATE.
+
+Superiority to fate
+  Is difficult to learn.
+'T is not conferred by any,
+  But possible to earn
+
+A pittance at a time,
+  Until, to her surprise,
+The soul with strict economy
+  Subsists till Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+HOPE.
+
+Hope is a subtle glutton;
+  He feeds upon the fair;
+And yet, inspected closely,
+  What abstinence is there!
+
+His is the halcyon table
+  That never seats but one,
+And whatsoever is consumed
+  The same amounts remain.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
+
+I.
+
+Forbidden fruit a flavor has
+  That lawful orchards mocks;
+How luscious lies the pea within
+  The pod that Duty locks!
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
+
+II.
+
+Heaven is what I cannot reach!
+  The apple on the tree,
+Provided it do hopeless hang,
+  That 'heaven' is, to me.
+
+The color on the cruising cloud,
+  The interdicted ground
+Behind the hill, the house behind, --
+  There Paradise is found!
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A WORD.
+
+A word is dead
+When it is said,
+  Some say.
+I say it just
+Begins to live
+  That day.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+To venerate the simple days
+  Which lead the seasons by,
+Needs but to remember
+  That from you or me
+They may take the trifle
+  Termed mortality!
+
+To invest existence with a stately air,
+Needs but to remember
+  That the acorn there
+Is the egg of forests
+  For the upper air!
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+LIFE'S TRADES.
+
+It's such a little thing to weep,
+  So short a thing to sigh;
+And yet by trades the size of these
+  We men and women die!
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Drowning is not so pitiful
+  As the attempt to rise.
+Three times, 't is said, a sinking man
+  Comes up to face the skies,
+And then declines forever
+  To that abhorred abode
+Where hope and he part company, --
+  For he is grasped of God.
+The Maker's cordial visage,
+  However good to see,
+Is shunned, we must admit it,
+  Like an adversity.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+How still the bells in steeples stand,
+  Till, swollen with the sky,
+They leap upon their silver feet
+  In frantic melody!
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+If the foolish call them 'flowers,'
+  Need the wiser tell?
+If the savans 'classify' them,
+  It is just as well!
+
+Those who read the Revelations
+  Must not criticise
+Those who read the same edition
+  With beclouded eyes!
+
+Could we stand with that old Moses
+  Canaan denied, --
+Scan, like him, the stately landscape
+  On the other side, --
+
+Doubtless we should deem superfluous
+  Many sciences
+Not pursued by learnèd angels
+  In scholastic skies!
+
+Low amid that glad _Belles lettres_
+  Grant that we may stand,
+Stars, amid profound Galaxies,
+  At that grand 'Right hand'!
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+A SYLLABLE.
+
+Could mortal lip divine
+  The undeveloped freight
+Of a delivered syllable,
+  'T would crumble with the weight.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+PARTING.
+
+My life closed twice before its close;
+  It yet remains to see
+If Immortality unveil
+  A third event to me,
+
+So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
+  As these that twice befell.
+Parting is all we know of heaven,
+  And all we need of hell.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+ASPIRATION.
+
+We never know how high we are
+  Till we are called to rise;
+And then, if we are true to plan,
+  Our statures touch the skies.
+
+The heroism we recite
+  Would be a daily thing,
+Did not ourselves the cubits warp
+  For fear to be a king.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE INEVITABLE.
+
+While I was fearing it, it came,
+  But came with less of fear,
+Because that fearing it so long
+  Had almost made it dear.
+There is a fitting a dismay,
+  A fitting a despair.
+'Tis harder knowing it is due,
+  Than knowing it is here.
+The trying on the utmost,
+  The morning it is new,
+Is terribler than wearing it
+  A whole existence through.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+A BOOK.
+
+There is no frigate like a book
+  To take us lands away,
+Nor any coursers like a page
+  Of prancing poetry.
+This traverse may the poorest take
+  Without oppress of toll;
+How frugal is the chariot
+  That bears a human soul!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+Who has not found the heaven below
+  Will fail of it above.
+God's residence is next to mine,
+  His furniture is love.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+A PORTRAIT.
+
+A face devoid of love or grace,
+  A hateful, hard, successful face,
+A face with which a stone
+  Would feel as thoroughly at ease
+As were they old acquaintances, --
+  First time together thrown.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+I HAD A GUINEA GOLDEN.
+
+I had a guinea golden;
+  I lost it in the sand,
+And though the sum was simple,
+  And pounds were in the land,
+Still had it such a value
+  Unto my frugal eye,
+That when I could not find it
+  I sat me down to sigh.
+
+I had a crimson robin
+  Who sang full many a day,
+But when the woods were painted
+  He, too, did fly away.
+Time brought me other robins, --
+  Their ballads were the same, --
+Still for my missing troubadour
+  I kept the 'house at hame.'
+
+I had a star in heaven;
+  One Pleiad was its name,
+And when I was not heeding
+  It wandered from the same.
+And though the skies are crowded,
+  And all the night ashine,
+I do not care about it,
+  Since none of them are mine.
+
+My story has a moral:
+  I have a missing friend, --
+Pleiad its name, and robin,
+  And guinea in the sand, --
+And when this mournful ditty,
+  Accompanied with tear,
+Shall meet the eye of traitor
+  In country far from here,
+Grant that repentance solemn
+  May seize upon his mind,
+And he no consolation
+  Beneath the sun may find.
+
+NOTE. -- This poem may have had, like many others, a
+personal origin. It is more than probable that it was
+sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty
+reminder of letter-writing delinquencies.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
+
+From all the jails the boys and girls
+  Ecstatically leap, --
+Beloved, only afternoon
+  That prison doesn't keep.
+
+They storm the earth and stun the air,
+  A mob of solid bliss.
+Alas! that frowns could lie in wait
+  For such a foe as this!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+Few get enough, -- enough is one;
+  To that ethereal throng
+Have not each one of us the right
+  To stealthily belong?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
+  Too sullied for the hell
+To which the law entitled him.
+  As nature's curtain fell
+The one who bore him tottered in,
+  For this was woman's son.
+''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped;
+  Oh, what a livid boon!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+THE LOST THOUGHT.
+
+I felt a clearing in my mind
+  As if my brain had split;
+I tried to match it, seam by seam,
+  But could not make them fit.
+
+The thought behind I strove to join
+  Unto the thought before,
+But sequence ravelled out of reach
+  Like balls upon a floor.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+RETICENCE.
+
+The reticent volcano keeps
+  His never slumbering plan;
+Confided are his projects pink
+  To no precarious man.
+
+If nature will not tell the tale
+  Jehovah told to her,
+Can human nature not survive
+  Without a listener?
+
+Admonished by her buckled lips
+  Let every babbler be.
+The only secret people keep
+  Is Immortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+WITH FLOWERS.
+
+If recollecting were forgetting,
+  Then I remember not;
+And if forgetting, recollecting,
+  How near I had forgot!
+And if to miss were merry,
+  And if to mourn were gay,
+How very blithe the fingers
+  That gathered these to-day!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+The farthest thunder that I heard
+  Was nearer than the sky,
+And rumbles still, though torrid noons
+  Have lain their missiles by.
+The lightning that preceded it
+  Struck no one but myself,
+But I would not exchange the bolt
+  For all the rest of life.
+Indebtedness to oxygen
+  The chemist may repay,
+But not the obligation
+  To electricity.
+It founds the homes and decks the days,
+  And every clamor bright
+Is but the gleam concomitant
+  Of that waylaying light.
+The thought is quiet as a flake, --
+  A crash without a sound;
+How life's reverberation
+  Its explanation found!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+On the bleakness of my lot
+  Bloom I strove to raise.
+Late, my acre of a rock
+  Yielded grape and maize.
+
+Soil of flint if steadfast tilled
+  Will reward the hand;
+Seed of palm by Lybian sun
+  Fructified in sand.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+CONTRAST.
+
+A door just opened on a street --
+  I, lost, was passing by --
+An instant's width of warmth disclosed,
+  And wealth, and company.
+
+The door as sudden shut, and I,
+  I, lost, was passing by, --
+Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
+  Enlightening misery.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+FRIENDS.
+
+Are friends delight or pain?
+  Could bounty but remain
+Riches were good.
+
+But if they only stay
+Bolder to fly away,
+  Riches are sad.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+FIRE.
+
+Ashes denote that fire was;
+  Respect the grayest pile
+For the departed creature's sake
+  That hovered there awhile.
+
+Fire exists the first in light,
+  And then consolidates, --
+Only the chemist can disclose
+  Into what carbonates.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+A MAN.
+
+Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
+  She felled -- he did not fall --
+Impaled him on her fiercest stakes --
+  He neutralized them all.
+
+She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
+  But, when her worst was done,
+And he, unmoved, regarded her,
+  Acknowledged him a man.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+VENTURES.
+
+Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
+  For the one ship that struts the shore
+Many's the gallant, overwhelmed creature
+  Nodding in navies nevermore.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+GRIEFS.
+
+I measure every grief I meet
+  With analytic eyes;
+I wonder if it weighs like mine,
+  Or has an easier size.
+
+I wonder if they bore it long,
+  Or did it just begin?
+I could not tell the date of mine,
+  It feels so old a pain.
+
+I wonder if it hurts to live,
+  And if they have to try,
+And whether, could they choose between,
+  They would not rather die.
+
+I wonder if when years have piled --
+  Some thousands -- on the cause
+Of early hurt, if such a lapse
+  Could give them any pause;
+
+Or would they go on aching still
+  Through centuries above,
+Enlightened to a larger pain
+  By contrast with the love.
+
+The grieved are many, I am told;
+  The reason deeper lies, --
+Death is but one and comes but once,
+  And only nails the eyes.
+
+There's grief of want, and grief of cold, --
+  A sort they call 'despair;'
+There's banishment from native eyes,
+  In sight of native air.
+
+And though I may not guess the kind
+  Correctly, yet to me
+A piercing comfort it affords
+  In passing Calvary,
+
+To note the fashions of the cross,
+  Of those that stand alone,
+Still fascinated to presume
+  That some are like my own.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+I have a king who does not speak;
+So, wondering, thro' the hours meek
+  I trudge the day away,--
+Half glad when it is night and sleep,
+If, haply, thro' a dream to peep
+  In parlors shut by day.
+
+And if I do, when morning comes,
+It is as if a hundred drums
+  Did round my pillow roll,
+And shouts fill all my childish sky,
+And bells keep saying 'victory'
+  From steeples in my soul!
+
+And if I don't, the little Bird
+Within the Orchard is not heard,
+  And I omit to pray,
+'Father, thy will be done' to-day,
+For my will goes the other way,
+  And it were perjury!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+DISENCHANTMENT.
+
+It dropped so low in my regard
+  I heard it hit the ground,
+And go to pieces on the stones
+  At bottom of my mind;
+
+Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less
+  Than I reviled myself
+For entertaining plated wares
+  Upon my silver shelf.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+LOST FAITH.
+
+To lose one's faith surpasses
+  The loss of an estate,
+Because estates can be
+  Replenished, -- faith cannot.
+
+Inherited with life,
+  Belief but once can be;
+Annihilate a single clause,
+  And Being's beggary.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+LOST JOY.
+
+I had a daily bliss
+  I half indifferent viewed,
+Till sudden I perceived it stir, --
+  It grew as I pursued,
+
+Till when, around a crag,
+  It wasted from my sight,
+Enlarged beyond my utmost scope,
+  I learned its sweetness right.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+I worked for chaff, and earning wheat
+  Was haughty and betrayed.
+What right had fields to arbitrate
+  In matters ratified?
+
+I tasted wheat, -- and hated chaff,
+  And thanked the ample friend;
+Wisdom is more becoming viewed
+  At distance than at hand.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+Life, and Death, and Giants
+  Such as these, are still.
+Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill,
+Beetle at the candle,
+  Or a fife's small fame,
+Maintain by accident
+  That they proclaim.
+
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+ALPINE GLOW.
+
+Our lives are Swiss, --
+  So still, so cool,
+  Till, some odd afternoon,
+The Alps neglect their curtains,
+  And we look farther on.
+
+Italy stands the other side,
+  While, like a guard between,
+The solemn Alps,
+The siren Alps,
+  Forever intervene!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+REMEMBRANCE.
+
+Remembrance has a rear and front, --
+  'T is something like a house;
+It has a garret also
+  For refuse and the mouse,
+
+Besides, the deepest cellar
+  That ever mason hewed;
+Look to it, by its fathoms
+  Ourselves be not pursued.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+To hang our head ostensibly,
+  And subsequent to find
+That such was not the posture
+  Of our immortal mind,
+
+Affords the sly presumption
+  That, in so dense a fuzz,
+You, too, take cobweb attitudes
+  Upon a plane of gauze!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+THE BRAIN.
+
+The brain is wider than the sky,
+  For, put them side by side,
+The one the other will include
+  With ease, and you beside.
+
+The brain is deeper than the sea,
+  For, hold them, blue to blue,
+The one the other will absorb,
+  As sponges, buckets do.
+
+The brain is just the weight of God,
+  For, lift them, pound for pound,
+And they will differ, if they do,
+  As syllable from sound.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+The bone that has no marrow;
+  What ultimate for that?
+It is not fit for table,
+  For beggar, or for cat.
+
+A bone has obligations,
+  A being has the same;
+A marrowless assembly
+  Is culpabler than shame.
+
+But how shall finished creatures
+  A function fresh obtain? --
+Old Nicodemus' phantom
+  Confronting us again!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+THE PAST.
+
+The past is such a curious creature,
+  To look her in the face
+A transport may reward us,
+  Or a disgrace.
+
+Unarmed if any meet her,
+  I charge him, fly!
+Her rusty ammunition
+  Might yet reply!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+To help our bleaker parts
+  Salubrious hours are given,
+Which if they do not fit for earth
+  Drill silently for heaven.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+What soft, cherubic creatures
+  These gentlewomen are!
+One would as soon assault a plush
+  Or violate a star.
+
+Such dimity convictions,
+  A horror so refined
+Of freckled human nature,
+  Of Deity ashamed, --
+
+It's such a common glory,
+  A fisherman's degree!
+Redemption, brittle lady,
+  Be so, ashamed of thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+DESIRE.
+
+Who never wanted, -- maddest joy
+  Remains to him unknown:
+The banquet of abstemiousness
+  Surpasses that of wine.
+
+Within its hope, though yet ungrasped
+  Desire's perfect goal,
+No nearer, lest reality
+  Should disenthrall thy soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+PHILOSOPHY.
+
+It might be easier
+  To fail with land in sight,
+Than gain my blue peninsula
+  To perish of delight.
+
+
+
+
+
+L.
+
+POWER.
+
+You cannot put a fire out;
+  A thing that can ignite
+Can go, itself, without a fan
+  Upon the slowest night.
+
+You cannot fold a flood
+  And put it in a drawer, --
+Because the winds would find it out,
+  And tell your cedar floor.
+
+
+
+
+
+LI.
+
+A modest lot, a fame petite,
+  A brief campaign of sting and sweet
+  Is plenty! Is enough!
+A sailor's business is the shore,
+  A soldier's -- balls. Who asketh more
+Must seek the neighboring life!
+
+
+
+
+
+LII.
+
+Is bliss, then, such abyss
+I must not put my foot amiss
+For fear I spoil my shoe?
+
+I'd rather suit my foot
+Than save my boot,
+For yet to buy another pair
+Is possible
+At any fair.
+
+But bliss is sold just once;
+The patent lost
+None buy it any more.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+EXPERIENCE.
+
+I stepped from plank to plank
+  So slow and cautiously;
+The stars about my head I felt,
+  About my feet the sea.
+
+I knew not but the next
+  Would be my final inch, --
+This gave me that precarious gait
+  Some call experience.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIV.
+
+THANKSGIVING DAY.
+
+One day is there of the series
+  Termed Thanksgiving day,
+Celebrated part at table,
+  Part in memory.
+
+Neither patriarch nor pussy,
+  I dissect the play;
+Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
+  Reflex holiday.
+
+Had there been no sharp subtraction
+  From the early sum,
+Not an acre or a caption
+  Where was once a room,
+
+Not a mention, whose small pebble
+  Wrinkled any bay, --
+Unto such, were such assembly,
+  'T were Thanksgiving day.
+
+
+
+
+
+LV.
+
+CHILDISH GRIEFS.
+
+Softened by Time's consummate plush,
+  How sleek the woe appears
+That threatened childhood's citadel
+  And undermined the years!
+
+Bisected now by bleaker griefs,
+  We envy the despair
+That devastated childhood's realm,
+  So easy to repair.
+
+
+
+
+
+II. LOVE.
+
+
+I.
+
+CONSECRATION.
+
+Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,
+  Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,
+Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,
+  Not to partake thy passion, my humility.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+LOVE'S HUMILITY.
+
+My worthiness is all my doubt,
+  His merit all my fear,
+Contrasting which, my qualities
+  Do lowlier appear;
+
+Lest I should insufficient prove
+  For his beloved need,
+The chiefest apprehension
+  Within my loving creed.
+
+So I, the undivine abode
+  Of his elect content,
+Conform my soul as 't were a church
+  Unto her sacrament.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+LOVE.
+
+Love is anterior to life,
+  Posterior to death,
+Initial of creation, and
+  The exponent of breath.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+SATISFIED.
+
+One blessing had I, than the rest
+  So larger to my eyes
+That I stopped gauging, satisfied,
+  For this enchanted size.
+
+It was the limit of my dream,
+  The focus of my prayer, --
+A perfect, paralyzing bliss
+  Contented as despair.
+
+I knew no more of want or cold,
+  Phantasms both become,
+For this new value in the soul,
+  Supremest earthly sum.
+
+The heaven below the heaven above
+  Obscured with ruddier hue.
+Life's latitude leant over-full;
+  The judgment perished, too.
+
+Why joys so scantily disburse,
+  Why Paradise defer,
+Why floods are served to us in bowls, --
+  I speculate no more.
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+WITH A FLOWER.
+
+When roses cease to bloom, dear,
+  And violets are done,
+When bumble-bees in solemn flight
+  Have passed beyond the sun,
+
+The hand that paused to gather
+  Upon this summer's day
+Will idle lie, in Auburn, --
+  Then take my flower, pray!
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+SONG.
+
+Summer for thee grant I may be
+  When summer days are flown!
+Thy music still when whippoorwill
+  And oriole are done!
+
+For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb
+  And sow my blossoms o'er!
+Pray gather me, Anemone,
+  Thy flower forevermore!
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+LOYALTY.
+
+Split the lark and you'll find the music,
+  Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled,
+Scantily dealt to the summer morning,
+  Saved for your ear when lutes be old.
+
+Loose the flood, you shall find it patent,
+  Gush after gush, reserved for you;
+Scarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas,
+  Now, do you doubt that your bird was true?
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+To lose thee, sweeter than to gain
+  All other hearts I knew.
+'T is true the drought is destitute,
+  But then I had the dew!
+
+The Caspian has its realms of sand,
+  Its other realm of sea;
+Without the sterile perquisite
+  No Caspian could be.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+  Poor little heart!
+  Did they forget thee?
+Then dinna care! Then dinna care!
+
+  Proud little heart!
+  Did they forsake thee?
+Be debonair! Be debonair!
+
+  Frail little heart!
+  I would not break thee:
+Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me?
+
+  Gay little heart!
+  Like morning glory
+Thou'll wilted be; thou'll wilted be!
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+FORGOTTEN.
+
+There is a word
+  Which bears a sword
+  Can pierce an armed man.
+It hurls its barbed syllables,--
+  At once is mute again.
+But where it fell
+The saved will tell
+  On patriotic day,
+Some epauletted brother
+  Gave his breath away.
+
+Wherever runs the breathless sun,
+  Wherever roams the day,
+There is its noiseless onset,
+  There is its victory!
+
+Behold the keenest marksman!
+  The most accomplished shot!
+Time's sublimest target
+  Is a soul 'forgot'!
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+I've got an arrow here;
+  Loving the hand that sent it,
+I the dart revere.
+
+Fell, they will say, in 'skirmish'!
+  Vanquished, my soul will know,
+By but a simple arrow
+  Sped by an archer's bow.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+THE MASTER.
+
+He fumbles at your spirit
+  As players at the keys
+Before they drop full music on;
+  He stuns you by degrees,
+
+Prepares your brittle substance
+  For the ethereal blow,
+By fainter hammers, further heard,
+  Then nearer, then so slow
+
+Your breath has time to straighten,
+  Your brain to bubble cool, --
+Deals one imperial thunderbolt
+  That scalps your naked soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+Heart, we will forget him!
+  You and I, to-night!
+You may forget the warmth he gave,
+  I will forget the light.
+
+When you have done, pray tell me,
+  That I my thoughts may dim;
+Haste! lest while you're lagging,
+  I may remember him!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Father, I bring thee not myself, --
+  That were the little load;
+I bring thee the imperial heart
+  I had not strength to hold.
+
+The heart I cherished in my own
+  Till mine too heavy grew,
+Yet strangest, heavier since it went,
+  Is it too large for you?
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+We outgrow love like other things
+  And put it in the drawer,
+Till it an antique fashion shows
+  Like costumes grandsires wore.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Not with a club the heart is broken,
+    Nor with a stone;
+A whip, so small you could not see it.
+    I've known
+
+To lash the magic creature
+    Till it fell,
+Yet that whip's name too noble
+    Then to tell.
+
+Magnanimous of bird
+    By boy descried,
+To sing unto the stone
+    Of which it died.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+WHO?
+
+My friend must be a bird,
+    Because it flies!
+Mortal my friend must be,
+    Because it dies!
+Barbs has it, like a bee.
+Ah, curious friend,
+    Thou puzzlest me!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+He touched me, so I live to know
+That such a day, permitted so,
+  I groped upon his breast.
+It was a boundless place to me,
+And silenced, as the awful sea
+  Puts minor streams to rest.
+
+And now, I'm different from before,
+As if I breathed superior air,
+  Or brushed a royal gown;
+My feet, too, that had wandered so,
+My gypsy face transfigured now
+  To tenderer renown.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+DREAMS.
+
+Let me not mar that perfect dream
+  By an auroral stain,
+But so adjust my daily night
+  That it will come again.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+NUMEN LUMEN.
+
+I live with him, I see his face;
+  I go no more away
+For visitor, or sundown;
+  Death's single privacy,
+
+The only one forestalling mine,
+  And that by right that he
+Presents a claim invisible,
+  No wedlock granted me.
+
+I live with him, I hear his voice,
+  I stand alive to-day
+To witness to the certainty
+  Of immortality
+
+Taught me by Time, -- the lower way,
+  Conviction every day, --
+That life like this is endless,
+  Be judgment what it may.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+LONGING.
+
+I envy seas whereon he rides,
+  I envy spokes of wheels
+Of chariots that him convey,
+  I envy speechless hills
+
+That gaze upon his journey;
+  How easy all can see
+What is forbidden utterly
+  As heaven, unto me!
+
+I envy nests of sparrows
+  That dot his distant eaves,
+The wealthy fly upon his pane,
+  The happy, happy leaves
+
+That just abroad his window
+  Have summer's leave to be,
+The earrings of Pizarro
+  Could not obtain for me.
+
+I envy light that wakes him,
+  And bells that boldly ring
+To tell him it is noon abroad, --
+  Myself his noon could bring,
+
+Yet interdict my blossom
+  And abrogate my bee,
+Lest noon in everlasting night
+  Drop Gabriel and me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+WEDDED.
+
+A solemn thing it was, I said,
+  A woman white to be,
+And wear, if God should count me fit,
+  Her hallowed mystery.
+
+A timid thing to drop a life
+  Into the purple well,
+Too plummetless that it come back
+  Eternity until.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III. NATURE.
+
+
+I.
+
+NATURE'S CHANGES.
+
+The springtime's pallid landscape
+  Will glow like bright bouquet,
+Though drifted deep in parian
+  The village lies to-day.
+
+The lilacs, bending many a year,
+  With purple load will hang;
+The bees will not forget the tune
+  Their old forefathers sang.
+
+The rose will redden in the bog,
+  The aster on the hill
+Her everlasting fashion set,
+  And covenant gentians frill,
+
+Till summer folds her miracle
+  As women do their gown,
+Or priests adjust the symbols
+  When sacrament is done.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE TULIP.
+
+She slept beneath a tree
+  Remembered but by me.
+I touched her cradle mute;
+She recognized the foot,
+Put on her carmine suit, --
+  And see!
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A light exists in spring
+  Not present on the year
+At any other period.
+  When March is scarcely here
+
+A color stands abroad
+  On solitary hills
+That science cannot overtake,
+  But human nature feels.
+
+It waits upon the lawn;
+  It shows the furthest tree
+Upon the furthest slope we know;
+  It almost speaks to me.
+
+Then, as horizons step,
+  Or noons report away,
+Without the formula of sound,
+  It passes, and we stay:
+
+A quality of loss
+  Affecting our content,
+As trade had suddenly encroached
+  Upon a sacrament.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE WAKING YEAR.
+
+A lady red upon the hill
+  Her annual secret keeps;
+A lady white within the field
+  In placid lily sleeps!
+
+The tidy breezes with their brooms
+  Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!
+Prithee, my pretty housewives!
+  Who may expected be?
+
+The neighbors do not yet suspect!
+  The woods exchange a smile --
+Orchard, and buttercup, and bird --
+  In such a little while!
+
+And yet how still the landscape stands,
+  How nonchalant the wood,
+As if the resurrection
+  Were nothing very odd!
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+TO MARCH.
+
+Dear March, come in!
+How glad I am!
+I looked for you before.
+Put down your hat --
+You must have walked --
+How out of breath you are!
+Dear March, how are you?
+And the rest?
+Did you leave Nature well?
+Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
+I have so much to tell!
+
+I got your letter, and the birds';
+The maples never knew
+That you were coming, -- I declare,
+How red their faces grew!
+But, March, forgive me --
+And all those hills
+You left for me to hue;
+There was no purple suitable,
+You took it all with you.
+
+Who knocks? That April!
+Lock the door!
+I will not be pursued!
+He stayed away a year, to call
+When I am occupied.
+But trifles look so trivial
+As soon as you have come,
+That blame is just as dear as praise
+And praise as mere as blame.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+MARCH.
+
+We like March, his shoes are purple,
+  He is new and high;
+Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
+  Makes he forest dry;
+Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
+  And begets her spot.
+Stands the sun so close and mighty
+  That our minds are hot.
+News is he of all the others;
+  Bold it were to die
+With the blue-birds buccaneering
+  On his British sky.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+DAWN.
+
+Not knowing when the dawn will come
+  I open every door;
+Or has it feathers like a bird,
+  Or billows like a shore?
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+A murmur in the trees to note,
+  Not loud enough for wind;
+A star not far enough to seek,
+  Nor near enough to find;
+
+A long, long yellow on the lawn,
+  A hubbub as of feet;
+Not audible, as ours to us,
+  But dapperer, more sweet;
+
+A hurrying home of little men
+  To houses unperceived, --
+All this, and more, if I should tell,
+  Would never be believed.
+
+Of robins in the trundle bed
+  How many I espy
+Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings,
+  Although I heard them try!
+
+But then I promised ne'er to tell;
+  How could I break my word?
+So go your way and I'll go mine, --
+  No fear you'll miss the road.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Morning is the place for dew,
+  Corn is made at noon,
+After dinner light for flowers,
+  Dukes for setting sun!
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
+  The bushes they were bells;
+I could not find a privacy
+  From Nature's sentinels.
+
+In cave if I presumed to hide,
+  The walls began to tell;
+Creation seemed a mighty crack
+  To make me visible.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+A ROSE.
+
+A sepal, petal, and a thorn
+  Upon a common summer's morn,
+A flash of dew, a bee or two,
+A breeze
+A caper in the trees, --
+  And I'm a rose!
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+High from the earth I heard a bird;
+  He trod upon the trees
+As he esteemed them trifles,
+  And then he spied a breeze,
+And situated softly
+  Upon a pile of wind
+Which in a perturbation
+  Nature had left behind.
+A joyous-going fellow
+  I gathered from his talk,
+Which both of benediction
+  And badinage partook,
+Without apparent burden,
+  I learned, in leafy wood
+He was the faithful father
+  Of a dependent brood;
+And this untoward transport
+  His remedy for care, --
+A contrast to our respites.
+  How different we are!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+COBWEBS.
+
+The spider as an artist
+  Has never been employed
+Though his surpassing merit
+  Is freely certified
+
+By every broom and Bridget
+  Throughout a Christian land.
+Neglected son of genius,
+  I take thee by the hand.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+A WELL.
+
+What mystery pervades a well!
+  The water lives so far,
+Like neighbor from another world
+  Residing in a jar.
+
+The grass does not appear afraid;
+  I often wonder he
+Can stand so close and look so bold
+  At what is dread to me.
+
+Related somehow they may be, --
+  The sedge stands next the sea,
+Where he is floorless, yet of fear
+  No evidence gives he.
+
+But nature is a stranger yet;
+  The ones that cite her most
+Have never passed her haunted house,
+  Nor simplified her ghost.
+
+To pity those that know her not
+  Is helped by the regret
+That those who know her, know her less
+  The nearer her they get.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --
+One clover, and a bee,
+And revery.
+The revery alone will do
+If bees are few.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+THE WIND.
+
+It's like the light, --
+  A fashionless delight
+It's like the bee, --
+  A dateless melody.
+
+It's like the woods,
+  Private like breeze,
+Phraseless, yet it stirs
+  The proudest trees.
+
+It's like the morning, --
+  Best when it's done, --
+The everlasting clocks
+  Chime noon.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+A dew sufficed itself
+  And satisfied a leaf,
+And felt, 'how vast a destiny!
+  How trivial is life!'
+
+The sun went out to work,
+  The day went out to play,
+But not again that dew was seen
+  By physiognomy.
+
+Whether by day abducted,
+  Or emptied by the sun
+Into the sea, in passing,
+  Eternally unknown.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE WOODPECKER.
+
+His bill an auger is,
+  His head, a cap and frill.
+He laboreth at every tree, --
+  A worm his utmost goal.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+A SNAKE.
+
+Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
+  Until we meet a snake;
+'T is then we sigh for houses,
+  And our departure take
+At that enthralling gallop
+  That only childhood knows.
+A snake is summer's treason,
+  And guile is where it goes.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+Could I but ride indefinite,
+  As doth the meadow-bee,
+And visit only where I liked,
+  And no man visit me,
+
+And flirt all day with buttercups,
+  And marry whom I may,
+And dwell a little everywhere,
+  Or better, run away
+
+With no police to follow,
+  Or chase me if I do,
+Till I should jump peninsulas
+  To get away from you, --
+
+I said, but just to be a bee
+  Upon a raft of air,
+And row in nowhere all day long,
+  And anchor off the bar,--
+What liberty! So captives deem
+  Who tight in dungeons are.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+THE MOON.
+
+The moon was but a chin of gold
+  A night or two ago,
+And now she turns her perfect face
+  Upon the world below.
+
+Her forehead is of amplest blond;
+  Her cheek like beryl stone;
+Her eye unto the summer dew
+  The likest I have known.
+
+Her lips of amber never part;
+  But what must be the smile
+Upon her friend she could bestow
+  Were such her silver will!
+
+And what a privilege to be
+  But the remotest star!
+For certainly her way might pass
+  Beside your twinkling door.
+
+Her bonnet is the firmament,
+  The universe her shoe,
+The stars the trinkets at her belt,
+  Her dimities of blue.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+THE BAT.
+
+The bat is dun with wrinkled wings
+  Like fallow article,
+And not a song pervades his lips,
+  Or none perceptible.
+
+His small umbrella, quaintly halved,
+  Describing in the air
+An arc alike inscrutable, --
+  Elate philosopher!
+
+Deputed from what firmament
+  Of what astute abode,
+Empowered with what malevolence
+  Auspiciously withheld.
+
+To his adroit Creator
+  Ascribe no less the praise;
+Beneficent, believe me,
+  His eccentricities.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+THE BALLOON.
+
+You've seen balloons set, haven't you?
+  So stately they ascend
+It is as swans discarded you
+  For duties diamond.
+
+Their liquid feet go softly out
+  Upon a sea of blond;
+They spurn the air as 't were too mean
+  For creatures so renowned.
+
+Their ribbons just beyond the eye,
+  They struggle some for breath,
+And yet the crowd applauds below;
+  They would not encore death.
+
+The gilded creature strains and spins,
+  Trips frantic in a tree,
+Tears open her imperial veins
+  And tumbles in the sea.
+
+The crowd retire with an oath
+  The dust in streets goes down,
+And clerks in counting-rooms observe,
+  ''T was only a balloon.'
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+EVENING.
+
+The cricket sang,
+And set the sun,
+And workmen finished, one by one,
+  Their seam the day upon.
+
+The low grass loaded with the dew,
+The twilight stood as strangers do
+With hat in hand, polite and new,
+  To stay as if, or go.
+
+A vastness, as a neighbor, came, --
+A wisdom without face or name,
+A peace, as hemispheres at home, --
+  And so the night became.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+COCOON.
+
+Drab habitation of whom?
+Tabernacle or tomb,
+Or dome of worm,
+Or porch of gnome,
+Or some elf's catacomb?
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+SUNSET.
+
+A sloop of amber slips away
+  Upon an ether sea,
+And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
+  The son of ecstasy.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+AURORA.
+
+Of bronze and blaze
+  The north, to-night!
+  So adequate its forms,
+So preconcerted with itself,
+  So distant to alarms, --
+An unconcern so sovereign
+  To universe, or me,
+It paints my simple spirit
+  With tints of majesty,
+Till I take vaster attitudes,
+  And strut upon my stem,
+Disdaining men and oxygen,
+  For arrogance of them.
+
+My splendors are menagerie;
+  But their competeless show
+Will entertain the centuries
+  When I am, long ago,
+An island in dishonored grass,
+  Whom none but daisies know.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+THE COMING OF NIGHT.
+
+How the old mountains drip with sunset,
+  And the brake of dun!
+How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
+  By the wizard sun!
+
+How the old steeples hand the scarlet,
+  Till the ball is full, --
+Have I the lip of the flamingo
+  That I dare to tell?
+
+Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,
+  Touching all the grass
+With a departing, sapphire feature,
+  As if a duchess pass!
+
+How a small dusk crawls on the village
+  Till the houses blot;
+And the odd flambeaux no men carry
+  Glimmer on the spot!
+
+Now it is night in nest and kennel,
+  And where was the wood,
+Just a dome of abyss is nodding
+  Into solitude! --
+
+These are the visions baffled Guido;
+  Titian never told;
+Domenichino dropped the pencil,
+  Powerless to unfold.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+AFTERMATH.
+
+The murmuring of bees has ceased;
+  But murmuring of some
+Posterior, prophetic,
+  Has simultaneous come, --
+
+The lower metres of the year,
+  When nature's laugh is done, --
+The Revelations of the book
+  Whose Genesis is June.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.
+
+I.
+
+This world is not conclusion;
+  A sequel stands beyond,
+Invisible, as music,
+  But positive, as sound.
+It beckons and it baffles;
+  Philosophies don't know,
+And through a riddle, at the last,
+  Sagacity must go.
+To guess it puzzles scholars;
+  To gain it, men have shown
+Contempt of generations,
+  And crucifixion known.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+We learn in the retreating
+  How vast an one
+Was recently among us.
+  A perished sun
+
+Endears in the departure
+  How doubly more
+Than all the golden presence
+  It was before!
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+They say that 'time assuages,' --
+  Time never did assuage;
+An actual suffering strengthens,
+  As sinews do, with age.
+
+Time is a test of trouble,
+  But not a remedy.
+If such it prove, it prove too
+  There was no malady.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+We cover thee, sweet face.
+  Not that we tire of thee,
+But that thyself fatigue of us;
+  Remember, as thou flee,
+We follow thee until
+  Thou notice us no more,
+And then, reluctant, turn away
+  To con thee o'er and o'er,
+And blame the scanty love
+  We were content to show,
+Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold
+  If thou would'st take it now.
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+ENDING.
+
+That is solemn we have ended, --
+  Be it but a play,
+Or a glee among the garrets,
+  Or a holiday,
+
+Or a leaving home; or later,
+  Parting with a world
+We have understood, for better
+  Still it be unfurled.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+The stimulus, beyond the grave
+  His countenance to see,
+Supports me like imperial drams
+  Afforded royally.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Given in marriage unto thee,
+  Oh, thou celestial host!
+Bride of the Father and the Son,
+  Bride of the Holy Ghost!
+
+Other betrothal shall dissolve,
+  Wedlock of will decay;
+Only the keeper of this seal
+  Conquers mortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+That such have died enables us
+  The tranquiller to die;
+That such have lived, certificate
+  For immortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+They won't frown always, -- some sweet day
+  When I forget to tease,
+They'll recollect how cold I looked,
+  And how I just said 'please.'
+
+Then they will hasten to the door
+  To call the little child,
+Who cannot thank them, for the ice
+  That on her lisping piled.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+IMMORTALITY.
+
+It is an honorable thought,
+  And makes one lift one's hat,
+As one encountered gentlefolk
+  Upon a daily street,
+
+That we've immortal place,
+  Though pyramids decay,
+And kingdoms, like the orchard,
+  Flit russetly away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+The distance that the dead have gone
+  Does not at first appear;
+Their coming back seems possible
+  For many an ardent year.
+
+And then, that we have followed them
+  We more than half suspect,
+So intimate have we become
+  With their dear retrospect.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+How dare the robins sing,
+  When men and women hear
+Who since they went to their account
+  Have settled with the year! --
+Paid all that life had earned
+  In one consummate bill,
+And now, what life or death can do
+  Is immaterial.
+Insulting is the sun
+  To him whose mortal light,
+Beguiled of immortality,
+  Bequeaths him to the night.
+In deference to him
+  Extinct be every hum,
+Whose garden wrestles with the dew,
+  At daybreak overcome!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+DEATH.
+
+Death is like the insect
+  Menacing the tree,
+Competent to kill it,
+  But decoyed may be.
+
+Bait it with the balsam,
+  Seek it with the knife,
+Baffle, if it cost you
+  Everything in life.
+
+Then, if it have burrowed
+  Out of reach of skill,
+Ring the tree and leave it, --
+  'T is the vermin's will.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+UNWARNED.
+
+'T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou
+  No station in the day?
+'T was not thy wont to hinder so, --
+  Retrieve thine industry.
+
+'T is noon, my little maid, alas!
+  And art thou sleeping yet?
+The lily waiting to be wed,
+  The bee, dost thou forget?
+
+My little maid, 't is night; alas,
+  That night should be to thee
+Instead of morning! Hadst thou broached
+  Thy little plan to me,
+Dissuade thee if I could not, sweet,
+  I might have aided thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+Each that we lose takes part of us;
+  A crescent still abides,
+Which like the moon, some turbid night,
+  Is summoned by the tides.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Not any higher stands the grave
+  For heroes than for men;
+Not any nearer for the child
+  Than numb three-score and ten.
+
+This latest leisure equal lulls
+  The beggar and his queen;
+Propitiate this democrat
+  By summer's gracious mien.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+ASLEEP.
+
+As far from pity as complaint,
+  As cool to speech as stone,
+As numb to revelation
+  As if my trade were bone.
+
+As far from time as history,
+  As near yourself to-day
+As children to the rainbow's scarf,
+  Or sunset's yellow play
+
+To eyelids in the sepulchre.
+  How still the dancer lies,
+While color's revelations break,
+  And blaze the butterflies!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE SPIRIT.
+
+'T is whiter than an Indian pipe,
+  'T is dimmer than a lace;
+No stature has it, like a fog,
+  When you approach the place.
+
+Not any voice denotes it here,
+  Or intimates it there;
+A spirit, how doth it accost?
+  What customs hath the air?
+
+This limitless hyperbole
+  Each one of us shall be;
+'T is drama, if (hypothesis)
+  It be not tragedy!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+THE MONUMENT.
+
+She laid her docile crescent down,
+  And this mechanic stone
+Still states, to dates that have forgot,
+  The news that she is gone.
+
+So constant to its stolid trust,
+  The shaft that never knew,
+It shames the constancy that fled
+  Before its emblem flew.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+Bless God, he went as soldiers,
+  His musket on his breast;
+Grant, God, he charge the bravest
+  Of all the martial blest.
+
+Please God, might I behold him
+  In epauletted white,
+I should not fear the foe then,
+  I should not fear the fight.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+Immortal is an ample word
+  When what we need is by,
+But when it leaves us for a time,
+  'T is a necessity.
+
+Of heaven above the firmest proof
+  We fundamental know,
+Except for its marauding hand,
+  It had been heaven below.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+Where every bird is bold to go,
+  And bees abashless play,
+The foreigner before he knocks
+  Must thrust the tears away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+The grave my little cottage is,
+  Where, keeping house for thee,
+I make my parlor orderly,
+  And lay the marble tea,
+
+For two divided, briefly,
+  A cycle, it may be,
+Till everlasting life unite
+  In strong society.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+This was in the white of the year,
+  That was in the green,
+Drifts were as difficult then to think
+  As daisies now to be seen.
+
+Looking back is best that is left,
+  Or if it be before,
+Retrospection is prospect's half,
+  Sometimes almost more.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+Sweet hours have perished here;
+  This is a mighty room;
+Within its precincts hopes have played, --
+  Now shadows in the tomb.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+Me! Come! My dazzled face
+In such a shining place!
+
+Me! Hear! My foreign ear
+The sounds of welcome near!
+
+The saints shall meet
+Our bashful feet.
+
+My holiday shall be
+That they remember me;
+
+My paradise, the fame
+That they pronounce my name.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+INVISIBLE.
+
+From us she wandered now a year,
+  Her tarrying unknown;
+If wilderness prevent her feet,
+  Or that ethereal zone
+
+No eye hath seen and lived,
+  We ignorant must be.
+We only know what time of year
+  We took the mystery.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+I wish I knew that woman's name,
+  So, when she comes this way,
+To hold my life, and hold my ears,
+  For fear I hear her say
+
+She's 'sorry I am dead,' again,
+  Just when the grave and I
+Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, --
+  Our only lullaby.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+TRYING TO FORGET.
+
+Bereaved of all, I went abroad,
+  No less bereaved to be
+Upon a new peninsula, --
+  The grave preceded me,
+
+Obtained my lodgings ere myself,
+  And when I sought my bed,
+The grave it was, reposed upon
+  The pillow for my head.
+
+I waked, to find it first awake,
+  I rose, -- it followed me;
+I tried to drop it in the crowd,
+  To lose it in the sea,
+
+In cups of artificial drowse
+  To sleep its shape away, --
+The grave was finished, but the spade
+  Remained in memory.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+I felt a funeral in my brain,
+  And mourners, to and fro,
+Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
+  That sense was breaking through.
+
+And when they all were seated,
+  A service like a drum
+Kept beating, beating, till I thought
+  My mind was going numb.
+
+And then I heard them lift a box,
+  And creak across my soul
+With those same boots of lead, again.
+  Then space began to toll
+
+As all the heavens were a bell,
+  And Being but an ear,
+And I and silence some strange race,
+  Wrecked, solitary, here.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+I meant to find her when I came;
+  Death had the same design;
+But the success was his, it seems,
+  And the discomfit mine.
+
+I meant to tell her how I longed
+  For just this single time;
+But Death had told her so the first,
+  And she had hearkened him.
+
+To wander now is my abode;
+  To rest, -- to rest would be
+A privilege of hurricane
+  To memory and me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+WAITING.
+
+I sing to use the waiting,
+  My bonnet but to tie,
+And shut the door unto my house;
+  No more to do have I,
+
+Till, his best step approaching,
+  We journey to the day,
+And tell each other how we sang
+  To keep the dark away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+A sickness of this world it most occasions
+  When best men die;
+A wishfulness their far condition
+  To occupy.
+
+A chief indifference, as foreign
+  A world must be
+Themselves forsake contented,
+  For Deity.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+Superfluous were the sun
+  When excellence is dead;
+He were superfluous every day,
+  For every day is said
+
+That syllable whose faith
+  Just saves it from despair,
+And whose 'I'll meet you' hesitates
+  If love inquire, 'Where?'
+
+Upon his dateless fame
+  Our periods may lie,
+As stars that drop anonymous
+  From an abundant sky.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+So proud she was to die
+  It made us all ashamed
+That what we cherished, so unknown
+  To her desire seemed.
+
+So satisfied to go
+  Where none of us should be,
+Immediately, that anguish stooped
+  Almost to jealousy.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+FAREWELL.
+
+Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,
+  Then I am ready to go!
+Just a look at the horses --
+  Rapid! That will do!
+
+Put me in on the firmest side,
+  So I shall never fall;
+For we must ride to the Judgment,
+  And it's partly down hill.
+
+But never I mind the bridges,
+  And never I mind the sea;
+Held fast in everlasting race
+  By my own choice and thee.
+
+Good-by to the life I used to live,
+  And the world I used to know;
+And kiss the hills for me, just once;
+  Now I am ready to go!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+The dying need but little, dear, --
+  A glass of water's all,
+A flower's unobtrusive face
+  To punctuate the wall,
+
+A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,
+  And certainly that one
+No color in the rainbow
+  Perceives when you are gone.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+DEAD.
+
+There's something quieter than sleep
+  Within this inner room!
+It wears a sprig upon its breast,
+  And will not tell its name.
+
+Some touch it and some kiss it,
+  Some chafe its idle hand;
+It has a simple gravity
+  I do not understand!
+
+While simple-hearted neighbors
+  Chat of the 'early dead,'
+We, prone to periphrasis,
+  Remark that birds have fled!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+The soul should always stand ajar,
+  That if the heaven inquire,
+He will not be obliged to wait,
+  Or shy of troubling her.
+
+Depart, before the host has slid
+  The bolt upon the door,
+To seek for the accomplished guest, --
+  Her visitor no more.
+
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+Three weeks passed since I had seen her, --
+  Some disease had vexed;
+'T was with text and village singing
+  I beheld her next,
+
+And a company -- our pleasure
+  To discourse alone;
+Gracious now to me as any,
+  Gracious unto none.
+
+Borne, without dissent of either,
+  To the parish night;
+Of the separated people
+  Which are out of sight?
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+I breathed enough to learn the trick,
+  And now, removed from air,
+I simulate the breath so well,
+  That one, to be quite sure
+
+The lungs are stirless, must descend
+  Among the cunning cells,
+And touch the pantomime himself.
+  How cool the bellows feels!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+I wonder if the sepulchre
+  Is not a lonesome way,
+When men and boys, and larks and June
+  Go down the fields to hay!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+JOY IN DEATH.
+
+If tolling bell I ask the cause.
+  'A soul has gone to God,'
+I'm answered in a lonesome tone;
+  Is heaven then so sad?
+
+That bells should joyful ring to tell
+  A soul had gone to heaven,
+Would seem to me the proper way
+  A good news should be given.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+If I may have it when it's dead
+  I will contented be;
+If just as soon as breath is out
+  It shall belong to me,
+
+Until they lock it in the grave,
+  'T is bliss I cannot weigh,
+For though they lock thee in the grave,
+  Myself can hold the key.
+
+Think of it, lover! I and thee
+  Permitted face to face to be;
+After a life, a death we'll say, --
+  For death was that, and this is thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+Before the ice is in the pools,
+  Before the skaters go,
+Or any cheek at nightfall
+  Is tarnished by the snow,
+
+Before the fields have finished,
+  Before the Christmas tree,
+Wonder upon wonder
+  Will arrive to me!
+
+What we touch the hems of
+  On a summer's day;
+What is only walking
+  Just a bridge away;
+
+That which sings so, speaks so,
+  When there's no one here, --
+Will the frock I wept in
+  Answer me to wear?
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+DYING.
+
+I heard a fly buzz when I died;
+  The stillness round my form
+Was like the stillness in the air
+  Between the heaves of storm.
+
+The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
+  And breaths were gathering sure
+For that last onset, when the king
+  Be witnessed in his power.
+
+I willed my keepsakes, signed away
+  What portion of me I
+Could make assignable, -- and then
+  There interposed a fly,
+
+With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
+  Between the light and me;
+And then the windows failed, and then
+  I could not see to see.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+Adrift! A little boat adrift!
+  And night is coming down!
+Will no one guide a little boat
+  Unto the nearest town?
+
+So sailors say, on yesterday,
+  Just as the dusk was brown,
+One little boat gave up its strife,
+  And gurgled down and down.
+
+But angels say, on yesterday,
+  Just as the dawn was red,
+One little boat o'erspent with gales
+Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
+  Exultant, onward sped!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+There's been a death in the opposite house
+  As lately as to-day.
+I know it by the numb look
+  Such houses have alway.
+
+The neighbors rustle in and out,
+  The doctor drives away.
+A window opens like a pod,
+  Abrupt, mechanically;
+
+Somebody flings a mattress out, --
+  The children hurry by;
+They wonder if It died on that, --
+  I used to when a boy.
+
+The minister goes stiffly in
+  As if the house were his,
+And he owned all the mourners now,
+  And little boys besides;
+
+And then the milliner, and the man
+  Of the appalling trade,
+To take the measure of the house.
+  There'll be that dark parade
+
+Of tassels and of coaches soon;
+  It's easy as a sign, --
+The intuition of the news
+  In just a country town.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+We never know we go, -- when we are going
+  We jest and shut the door;
+Fate following behind us bolts it,
+  And we accost no more.
+
+
+
+
+L.
+
+THE SOUL'S STORM.
+
+It struck me every day
+  The lightning was as new
+As if the cloud that instant slit
+  And let the fire through.
+
+It burned me in the night,
+  It blistered in my dream;
+It sickened fresh upon my sight
+  With every morning's beam.
+
+I thought that storm was brief, --
+  The maddest, quickest by;
+But Nature lost the date of this,
+  And left it in the sky.
+
+
+
+
+
+LI.
+
+Water is taught by thirst;
+Land, by the oceans passed;
+  Transport, by throe;
+Peace, by its battles told;
+Love, by memorial mould;
+  Birds, by the snow.
+
+
+
+
+LII.
+
+THIRST.
+
+We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act;
+  And later, when we die,
+A little water supplicate
+  Of fingers going by.
+
+It intimates the finer want,
+  Whose adequate supply
+Is that great water in the west
+  Termed immortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+A clock stopped -- not the mantel's;
+  Geneva's farthest skill
+Can't put the puppet bowing
+  That just now dangled still.
+
+An awe came on the trinket!
+  The figures hunched with pain,
+Then quivered out of decimals
+  Into degreeless noon.
+
+It will not stir for doctors,
+  This pendulum of snow;
+The shopman importunes it,
+  While cool, concernless No
+
+Nods from the gilded pointers,
+  Nods from the seconds slim,
+Decades of arrogance between
+  The dial life and him.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIV.
+
+CHARLOTTE BRONTĂ‹'S GRAVE.
+
+All overgrown by cunning moss,
+  All interspersed with weed,
+The little cage of 'Currer Bell,'
+  In quiet Haworth laid.
+
+This bird, observing others,
+  When frosts too sharp became,
+Retire to other latitudes,
+  Quietly did the same,
+
+But differed in returning;
+  Since Yorkshire hills are green,
+Yet not in all the nests I meet
+  Can nightingale be seen.
+
+Gathered from many wanderings,
+  Gethsemane can tell
+Through what transporting anguish
+  She reached the asphodel!
+
+Soft fall the sounds of Eden
+  Upon her puzzled ear;
+Oh, what an afternoon for heaven,
+  When 'Brontë' entered there!
+
+
+
+
+
+LV.
+
+A toad can die of light!
+Death is the common right
+  Of toads and men, --
+Of earl and midge
+The privilege.
+  Why swagger then?
+The gnat's supremacy
+Is large as thine.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVI.
+
+Far from love the Heavenly Father
+  Leads the chosen child;
+Oftener through realm of briar
+  Than the meadow mild,
+
+Oftener by the claw of dragon
+  Than the hand of friend,
+Guides the little one predestined
+  To the native land.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVII.
+
+SLEEPING.
+
+A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
+  That makes no show for dawn
+By stretch of limb or stir of lid, --
+  An independent one.
+
+Was ever idleness like this?
+  Within a hut of stone
+To bask the centuries away
+  Nor once look up for noon?
+
+
+
+
+
+LVIII.
+
+RETROSPECT.
+
+'T was just this time last year I died.
+  I know I heard the corn,
+When I was carried by the farms, --
+  It had the tassels on.
+
+I thought how yellow it would look
+  When Richard went to mill;
+And then I wanted to get out,
+  But something held my will.
+
+I thought just how red apples wedged
+  The stubble's joints between;
+And carts went stooping round the fields
+  To take the pumpkins in.
+
+I wondered which would miss me least,
+  And when Thanksgiving came,
+If father'd multiply the plates
+  To make an even sum.
+
+And if my stocking hung too high,
+  Would it blur the Christmas glee,
+That not a Santa Claus could reach
+  The altitude of me?
+
+But this sort grieved myself, and so
+  I thought how it would be
+When just this time, some perfect year,
+  Themselves should come to me.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIX.
+
+ETERNITY.
+
+On this wondrous sea,
+Sailing silently,
+  Ho! pilot, ho!
+Knowest thou the shore
+Where no breakers roar,
+  Where the storm is o'er?
+
+In the silent west
+Many sails at rest,
+  Their anchors fast;
+Thither I pilot thee, --
+Land, ho! Eternity!
+  Ashore at last!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems: Third Series, by Emily Dickinson
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12241 ***
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12241 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12241)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems: Third Series, by Emily Dickinson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poems: Third Series
+
+Author: Emily Dickinson
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2004 [EBook #12241]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS: THIRD SERIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox.com>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+by EMILY DICKINSON
+
+Third Series
+
+
+
+
+Edited by
+
+MABEL LOOMIS TODD
+
+
+
+
+
+    It's all I have to bring to-day,
+      This, and my heart beside,
+    This, and my heart, and all the fields,
+      And all the meadows wide.
+    Be sure you count, should I forget, --
+      Some one the sum could tell, --
+    This, and my heart, and all the bees
+      Which in the clover dwell.
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+The intellectual activity of Emily Dickinson was so great that a
+large and characteristic choice is still possible among her
+literary material, and this third volume of her verses is put
+forth in response to the repeated wish of the admirers of her
+peculiar genius. Much of Emily Dickinson's prose was rhythmic,
+--even rhymed, though frequently not set apart in lines.
+
+Also many verses, written as such, were sent to friends in
+letters; these were published in 1894, in the volumes of her
+_Letters_. It has not been necessary, however, to include them in
+this Series, and all have been omitted, except three or four
+exceptionally strong ones, as "A Book," and "With Flowers."
+
+There is internal evidence that many of the poems were simply
+spontaneous flashes of insight, apparently unrelated to outward
+circumstance. Others, however, had an obvious personal origin;
+for example, the verses "I had a Guinea golden," which seem to
+have been sent to some friend travelling in Europe, as a dainty
+reminder of letter-writing delinquencies. The surroundings in
+which any of Emily Dickinson's verses are known to have been
+written usually serve to explain them clearly; but in general the
+present volume is full of thoughts needing no interpretation to
+those who apprehend this scintillating spirit.
+
+                                        M. L. T.
+
+AMHERST, _October_, 1896.
+
+
+
+
+I. LIFE.
+
+
+POEMS.
+
+I.
+
+REAL RICHES.
+
+'T is little I could care for pearls
+  Who own the ample sea;
+Or brooches, when the Emperor
+  With rubies pelteth me;
+
+Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines;
+  Or diamonds, when I see
+A diadem to fit a dome
+  Continual crowning me.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+SUPERIORITY TO FATE.
+
+Superiority to fate
+  Is difficult to learn.
+'T is not conferred by any,
+  But possible to earn
+
+A pittance at a time,
+  Until, to her surprise,
+The soul with strict economy
+  Subsists till Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+HOPE.
+
+Hope is a subtle glutton;
+  He feeds upon the fair;
+And yet, inspected closely,
+  What abstinence is there!
+
+His is the halcyon table
+  That never seats but one,
+And whatsoever is consumed
+  The same amounts remain.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
+
+I.
+
+Forbidden fruit a flavor has
+  That lawful orchards mocks;
+How luscious lies the pea within
+  The pod that Duty locks!
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
+
+II.
+
+Heaven is what I cannot reach!
+  The apple on the tree,
+Provided it do hopeless hang,
+  That 'heaven' is, to me.
+
+The color on the cruising cloud,
+  The interdicted ground
+Behind the hill, the house behind, --
+  There Paradise is found!
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A WORD.
+
+A word is dead
+When it is said,
+  Some say.
+I say it just
+Begins to live
+  That day.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+To venerate the simple days
+  Which lead the seasons by,
+Needs but to remember
+  That from you or me
+They may take the trifle
+  Termed mortality!
+
+To invest existence with a stately air,
+Needs but to remember
+  That the acorn there
+Is the egg of forests
+  For the upper air!
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+LIFE'S TRADES.
+
+It's such a little thing to weep,
+  So short a thing to sigh;
+And yet by trades the size of these
+  We men and women die!
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Drowning is not so pitiful
+  As the attempt to rise.
+Three times, 't is said, a sinking man
+  Comes up to face the skies,
+And then declines forever
+  To that abhorred abode
+Where hope and he part company, --
+  For he is grasped of God.
+The Maker's cordial visage,
+  However good to see,
+Is shunned, we must admit it,
+  Like an adversity.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+How still the bells in steeples stand,
+  Till, swollen with the sky,
+They leap upon their silver feet
+  In frantic melody!
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+If the foolish call them 'flowers,'
+  Need the wiser tell?
+If the savans 'classify' them,
+  It is just as well!
+
+Those who read the Revelations
+  Must not criticise
+Those who read the same edition
+  With beclouded eyes!
+
+Could we stand with that old Moses
+  Canaan denied, --
+Scan, like him, the stately landscape
+  On the other side, --
+
+Doubtless we should deem superfluous
+  Many sciences
+Not pursued by learnèd angels
+  In scholastic skies!
+
+Low amid that glad _Belles lettres_
+  Grant that we may stand,
+Stars, amid profound Galaxies,
+  At that grand 'Right hand'!
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+A SYLLABLE.
+
+Could mortal lip divine
+  The undeveloped freight
+Of a delivered syllable,
+  'T would crumble with the weight.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+PARTING.
+
+My life closed twice before its close;
+  It yet remains to see
+If Immortality unveil
+  A third event to me,
+
+So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
+  As these that twice befell.
+Parting is all we know of heaven,
+  And all we need of hell.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+ASPIRATION.
+
+We never know how high we are
+  Till we are called to rise;
+And then, if we are true to plan,
+  Our statures touch the skies.
+
+The heroism we recite
+  Would be a daily thing,
+Did not ourselves the cubits warp
+  For fear to be a king.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE INEVITABLE.
+
+While I was fearing it, it came,
+  But came with less of fear,
+Because that fearing it so long
+  Had almost made it dear.
+There is a fitting a dismay,
+  A fitting a despair.
+'Tis harder knowing it is due,
+  Than knowing it is here.
+The trying on the utmost,
+  The morning it is new,
+Is terribler than wearing it
+  A whole existence through.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+A BOOK.
+
+There is no frigate like a book
+  To take us lands away,
+Nor any coursers like a page
+  Of prancing poetry.
+This traverse may the poorest take
+  Without oppress of toll;
+How frugal is the chariot
+  That bears a human soul!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+Who has not found the heaven below
+  Will fail of it above.
+God's residence is next to mine,
+  His furniture is love.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+A PORTRAIT.
+
+A face devoid of love or grace,
+  A hateful, hard, successful face,
+A face with which a stone
+  Would feel as thoroughly at ease
+As were they old acquaintances, --
+  First time together thrown.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+I HAD A GUINEA GOLDEN.
+
+I had a guinea golden;
+  I lost it in the sand,
+And though the sum was simple,
+  And pounds were in the land,
+Still had it such a value
+  Unto my frugal eye,
+That when I could not find it
+  I sat me down to sigh.
+
+I had a crimson robin
+  Who sang full many a day,
+But when the woods were painted
+  He, too, did fly away.
+Time brought me other robins, --
+  Their ballads were the same, --
+Still for my missing troubadour
+  I kept the 'house at hame.'
+
+I had a star in heaven;
+  One Pleiad was its name,
+And when I was not heeding
+  It wandered from the same.
+And though the skies are crowded,
+  And all the night ashine,
+I do not care about it,
+  Since none of them are mine.
+
+My story has a moral:
+  I have a missing friend, --
+Pleiad its name, and robin,
+  And guinea in the sand, --
+And when this mournful ditty,
+  Accompanied with tear,
+Shall meet the eye of traitor
+  In country far from here,
+Grant that repentance solemn
+  May seize upon his mind,
+And he no consolation
+  Beneath the sun may find.
+
+NOTE. -- This poem may have had, like many others, a
+personal origin. It is more than probable that it was
+sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty
+reminder of letter-writing delinquencies.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
+
+From all the jails the boys and girls
+  Ecstatically leap, --
+Beloved, only afternoon
+  That prison doesn't keep.
+
+They storm the earth and stun the air,
+  A mob of solid bliss.
+Alas! that frowns could lie in wait
+  For such a foe as this!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+Few get enough, -- enough is one;
+  To that ethereal throng
+Have not each one of us the right
+  To stealthily belong?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
+  Too sullied for the hell
+To which the law entitled him.
+  As nature's curtain fell
+The one who bore him tottered in,
+  For this was woman's son.
+''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped;
+  Oh, what a livid boon!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+THE LOST THOUGHT.
+
+I felt a clearing in my mind
+  As if my brain had split;
+I tried to match it, seam by seam,
+  But could not make them fit.
+
+The thought behind I strove to join
+  Unto the thought before,
+But sequence ravelled out of reach
+  Like balls upon a floor.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+RETICENCE.
+
+The reticent volcano keeps
+  His never slumbering plan;
+Confided are his projects pink
+  To no precarious man.
+
+If nature will not tell the tale
+  Jehovah told to her,
+Can human nature not survive
+  Without a listener?
+
+Admonished by her buckled lips
+  Let every babbler be.
+The only secret people keep
+  Is Immortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+WITH FLOWERS.
+
+If recollecting were forgetting,
+  Then I remember not;
+And if forgetting, recollecting,
+  How near I had forgot!
+And if to miss were merry,
+  And if to mourn were gay,
+How very blithe the fingers
+  That gathered these to-day!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+The farthest thunder that I heard
+  Was nearer than the sky,
+And rumbles still, though torrid noons
+  Have lain their missiles by.
+The lightning that preceded it
+  Struck no one but myself,
+But I would not exchange the bolt
+  For all the rest of life.
+Indebtedness to oxygen
+  The chemist may repay,
+But not the obligation
+  To electricity.
+It founds the homes and decks the days,
+  And every clamor bright
+Is but the gleam concomitant
+  Of that waylaying light.
+The thought is quiet as a flake, --
+  A crash without a sound;
+How life's reverberation
+  Its explanation found!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+On the bleakness of my lot
+  Bloom I strove to raise.
+Late, my acre of a rock
+  Yielded grape and maize.
+
+Soil of flint if steadfast tilled
+  Will reward the hand;
+Seed of palm by Lybian sun
+  Fructified in sand.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+CONTRAST.
+
+A door just opened on a street --
+  I, lost, was passing by --
+An instant's width of warmth disclosed,
+  And wealth, and company.
+
+The door as sudden shut, and I,
+  I, lost, was passing by, --
+Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
+  Enlightening misery.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+FRIENDS.
+
+Are friends delight or pain?
+  Could bounty but remain
+Riches were good.
+
+But if they only stay
+Bolder to fly away,
+  Riches are sad.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+FIRE.
+
+Ashes denote that fire was;
+  Respect the grayest pile
+For the departed creature's sake
+  That hovered there awhile.
+
+Fire exists the first in light,
+  And then consolidates, --
+Only the chemist can disclose
+  Into what carbonates.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+A MAN.
+
+Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
+  She felled -- he did not fall --
+Impaled him on her fiercest stakes --
+  He neutralized them all.
+
+She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
+  But, when her worst was done,
+And he, unmoved, regarded her,
+  Acknowledged him a man.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+VENTURES.
+
+Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
+  For the one ship that struts the shore
+Many's the gallant, overwhelmed creature
+  Nodding in navies nevermore.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+GRIEFS.
+
+I measure every grief I meet
+  With analytic eyes;
+I wonder if it weighs like mine,
+  Or has an easier size.
+
+I wonder if they bore it long,
+  Or did it just begin?
+I could not tell the date of mine,
+  It feels so old a pain.
+
+I wonder if it hurts to live,
+  And if they have to try,
+And whether, could they choose between,
+  They would not rather die.
+
+I wonder if when years have piled --
+  Some thousands -- on the cause
+Of early hurt, if such a lapse
+  Could give them any pause;
+
+Or would they go on aching still
+  Through centuries above,
+Enlightened to a larger pain
+  By contrast with the love.
+
+The grieved are many, I am told;
+  The reason deeper lies, --
+Death is but one and comes but once,
+  And only nails the eyes.
+
+There's grief of want, and grief of cold, --
+  A sort they call 'despair;'
+There's banishment from native eyes,
+  In sight of native air.
+
+And though I may not guess the kind
+  Correctly, yet to me
+A piercing comfort it affords
+  In passing Calvary,
+
+To note the fashions of the cross,
+  Of those that stand alone,
+Still fascinated to presume
+  That some are like my own.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+I have a king who does not speak;
+So, wondering, thro' the hours meek
+  I trudge the day away,--
+Half glad when it is night and sleep,
+If, haply, thro' a dream to peep
+  In parlors shut by day.
+
+And if I do, when morning comes,
+It is as if a hundred drums
+  Did round my pillow roll,
+And shouts fill all my childish sky,
+And bells keep saying 'victory'
+  From steeples in my soul!
+
+And if I don't, the little Bird
+Within the Orchard is not heard,
+  And I omit to pray,
+'Father, thy will be done' to-day,
+For my will goes the other way,
+  And it were perjury!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+DISENCHANTMENT.
+
+It dropped so low in my regard
+  I heard it hit the ground,
+And go to pieces on the stones
+  At bottom of my mind;
+
+Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less
+  Than I reviled myself
+For entertaining plated wares
+  Upon my silver shelf.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+LOST FAITH.
+
+To lose one's faith surpasses
+  The loss of an estate,
+Because estates can be
+  Replenished, -- faith cannot.
+
+Inherited with life,
+  Belief but once can be;
+Annihilate a single clause,
+  And Being's beggary.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+LOST JOY.
+
+I had a daily bliss
+  I half indifferent viewed,
+Till sudden I perceived it stir, --
+  It grew as I pursued,
+
+Till when, around a crag,
+  It wasted from my sight,
+Enlarged beyond my utmost scope,
+  I learned its sweetness right.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+I worked for chaff, and earning wheat
+  Was haughty and betrayed.
+What right had fields to arbitrate
+  In matters ratified?
+
+I tasted wheat, -- and hated chaff,
+  And thanked the ample friend;
+Wisdom is more becoming viewed
+  At distance than at hand.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+Life, and Death, and Giants
+  Such as these, are still.
+Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill,
+Beetle at the candle,
+  Or a fife's small fame,
+Maintain by accident
+  That they proclaim.
+
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+ALPINE GLOW.
+
+Our lives are Swiss, --
+  So still, so cool,
+  Till, some odd afternoon,
+The Alps neglect their curtains,
+  And we look farther on.
+
+Italy stands the other side,
+  While, like a guard between,
+The solemn Alps,
+The siren Alps,
+  Forever intervene!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+REMEMBRANCE.
+
+Remembrance has a rear and front, --
+  'T is something like a house;
+It has a garret also
+  For refuse and the mouse,
+
+Besides, the deepest cellar
+  That ever mason hewed;
+Look to it, by its fathoms
+  Ourselves be not pursued.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+To hang our head ostensibly,
+  And subsequent to find
+That such was not the posture
+  Of our immortal mind,
+
+Affords the sly presumption
+  That, in so dense a fuzz,
+You, too, take cobweb attitudes
+  Upon a plane of gauze!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+THE BRAIN.
+
+The brain is wider than the sky,
+  For, put them side by side,
+The one the other will include
+  With ease, and you beside.
+
+The brain is deeper than the sea,
+  For, hold them, blue to blue,
+The one the other will absorb,
+  As sponges, buckets do.
+
+The brain is just the weight of God,
+  For, lift them, pound for pound,
+And they will differ, if they do,
+  As syllable from sound.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+The bone that has no marrow;
+  What ultimate for that?
+It is not fit for table,
+  For beggar, or for cat.
+
+A bone has obligations,
+  A being has the same;
+A marrowless assembly
+  Is culpabler than shame.
+
+But how shall finished creatures
+  A function fresh obtain? --
+Old Nicodemus' phantom
+  Confronting us again!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+THE PAST.
+
+The past is such a curious creature,
+  To look her in the face
+A transport may reward us,
+  Or a disgrace.
+
+Unarmed if any meet her,
+  I charge him, fly!
+Her rusty ammunition
+  Might yet reply!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+To help our bleaker parts
+  Salubrious hours are given,
+Which if they do not fit for earth
+  Drill silently for heaven.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+What soft, cherubic creatures
+  These gentlewomen are!
+One would as soon assault a plush
+  Or violate a star.
+
+Such dimity convictions,
+  A horror so refined
+Of freckled human nature,
+  Of Deity ashamed, --
+
+It's such a common glory,
+  A fisherman's degree!
+Redemption, brittle lady,
+  Be so, ashamed of thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+DESIRE.
+
+Who never wanted, -- maddest joy
+  Remains to him unknown:
+The banquet of abstemiousness
+  Surpasses that of wine.
+
+Within its hope, though yet ungrasped
+  Desire's perfect goal,
+No nearer, lest reality
+  Should disenthrall thy soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+PHILOSOPHY.
+
+It might be easier
+  To fail with land in sight,
+Than gain my blue peninsula
+  To perish of delight.
+
+
+
+
+
+L.
+
+POWER.
+
+You cannot put a fire out;
+  A thing that can ignite
+Can go, itself, without a fan
+  Upon the slowest night.
+
+You cannot fold a flood
+  And put it in a drawer, --
+Because the winds would find it out,
+  And tell your cedar floor.
+
+
+
+
+
+LI.
+
+A modest lot, a fame petite,
+  A brief campaign of sting and sweet
+  Is plenty! Is enough!
+A sailor's business is the shore,
+  A soldier's -- balls. Who asketh more
+Must seek the neighboring life!
+
+
+
+
+
+LII.
+
+Is bliss, then, such abyss
+I must not put my foot amiss
+For fear I spoil my shoe?
+
+I'd rather suit my foot
+Than save my boot,
+For yet to buy another pair
+Is possible
+At any fair.
+
+But bliss is sold just once;
+The patent lost
+None buy it any more.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+EXPERIENCE.
+
+I stepped from plank to plank
+  So slow and cautiously;
+The stars about my head I felt,
+  About my feet the sea.
+
+I knew not but the next
+  Would be my final inch, --
+This gave me that precarious gait
+  Some call experience.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIV.
+
+THANKSGIVING DAY.
+
+One day is there of the series
+  Termed Thanksgiving day,
+Celebrated part at table,
+  Part in memory.
+
+Neither patriarch nor pussy,
+  I dissect the play;
+Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
+  Reflex holiday.
+
+Had there been no sharp subtraction
+  From the early sum,
+Not an acre or a caption
+  Where was once a room,
+
+Not a mention, whose small pebble
+  Wrinkled any bay, --
+Unto such, were such assembly,
+  'T were Thanksgiving day.
+
+
+
+
+
+LV.
+
+CHILDISH GRIEFS.
+
+Softened by Time's consummate plush,
+  How sleek the woe appears
+That threatened childhood's citadel
+  And undermined the years!
+
+Bisected now by bleaker griefs,
+  We envy the despair
+That devastated childhood's realm,
+  So easy to repair.
+
+
+
+
+
+II. LOVE.
+
+
+I.
+
+CONSECRATION.
+
+Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,
+  Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,
+Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,
+  Not to partake thy passion, my humility.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+LOVE'S HUMILITY.
+
+My worthiness is all my doubt,
+  His merit all my fear,
+Contrasting which, my qualities
+  Do lowlier appear;
+
+Lest I should insufficient prove
+  For his beloved need,
+The chiefest apprehension
+  Within my loving creed.
+
+So I, the undivine abode
+  Of his elect content,
+Conform my soul as 't were a church
+  Unto her sacrament.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+LOVE.
+
+Love is anterior to life,
+  Posterior to death,
+Initial of creation, and
+  The exponent of breath.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+SATISFIED.
+
+One blessing had I, than the rest
+  So larger to my eyes
+That I stopped gauging, satisfied,
+  For this enchanted size.
+
+It was the limit of my dream,
+  The focus of my prayer, --
+A perfect, paralyzing bliss
+  Contented as despair.
+
+I knew no more of want or cold,
+  Phantasms both become,
+For this new value in the soul,
+  Supremest earthly sum.
+
+The heaven below the heaven above
+  Obscured with ruddier hue.
+Life's latitude leant over-full;
+  The judgment perished, too.
+
+Why joys so scantily disburse,
+  Why Paradise defer,
+Why floods are served to us in bowls, --
+  I speculate no more.
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+WITH A FLOWER.
+
+When roses cease to bloom, dear,
+  And violets are done,
+When bumble-bees in solemn flight
+  Have passed beyond the sun,
+
+The hand that paused to gather
+  Upon this summer's day
+Will idle lie, in Auburn, --
+  Then take my flower, pray!
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+SONG.
+
+Summer for thee grant I may be
+  When summer days are flown!
+Thy music still when whippoorwill
+  And oriole are done!
+
+For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb
+  And sow my blossoms o'er!
+Pray gather me, Anemone,
+  Thy flower forevermore!
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+LOYALTY.
+
+Split the lark and you'll find the music,
+  Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled,
+Scantily dealt to the summer morning,
+  Saved for your ear when lutes be old.
+
+Loose the flood, you shall find it patent,
+  Gush after gush, reserved for you;
+Scarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas,
+  Now, do you doubt that your bird was true?
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+To lose thee, sweeter than to gain
+  All other hearts I knew.
+'T is true the drought is destitute,
+  But then I had the dew!
+
+The Caspian has its realms of sand,
+  Its other realm of sea;
+Without the sterile perquisite
+  No Caspian could be.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+  Poor little heart!
+  Did they forget thee?
+Then dinna care! Then dinna care!
+
+  Proud little heart!
+  Did they forsake thee?
+Be debonair! Be debonair!
+
+  Frail little heart!
+  I would not break thee:
+Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me?
+
+  Gay little heart!
+  Like morning glory
+Thou'll wilted be; thou'll wilted be!
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+FORGOTTEN.
+
+There is a word
+  Which bears a sword
+  Can pierce an armed man.
+It hurls its barbed syllables,--
+  At once is mute again.
+But where it fell
+The saved will tell
+  On patriotic day,
+Some epauletted brother
+  Gave his breath away.
+
+Wherever runs the breathless sun,
+  Wherever roams the day,
+There is its noiseless onset,
+  There is its victory!
+
+Behold the keenest marksman!
+  The most accomplished shot!
+Time's sublimest target
+  Is a soul 'forgot'!
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+I've got an arrow here;
+  Loving the hand that sent it,
+I the dart revere.
+
+Fell, they will say, in 'skirmish'!
+  Vanquished, my soul will know,
+By but a simple arrow
+  Sped by an archer's bow.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+THE MASTER.
+
+He fumbles at your spirit
+  As players at the keys
+Before they drop full music on;
+  He stuns you by degrees,
+
+Prepares your brittle substance
+  For the ethereal blow,
+By fainter hammers, further heard,
+  Then nearer, then so slow
+
+Your breath has time to straighten,
+  Your brain to bubble cool, --
+Deals one imperial thunderbolt
+  That scalps your naked soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+Heart, we will forget him!
+  You and I, to-night!
+You may forget the warmth he gave,
+  I will forget the light.
+
+When you have done, pray tell me,
+  That I my thoughts may dim;
+Haste! lest while you're lagging,
+  I may remember him!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Father, I bring thee not myself, --
+  That were the little load;
+I bring thee the imperial heart
+  I had not strength to hold.
+
+The heart I cherished in my own
+  Till mine too heavy grew,
+Yet strangest, heavier since it went,
+  Is it too large for you?
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+We outgrow love like other things
+  And put it in the drawer,
+Till it an antique fashion shows
+  Like costumes grandsires wore.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Not with a club the heart is broken,
+    Nor with a stone;
+A whip, so small you could not see it.
+    I've known
+
+To lash the magic creature
+    Till it fell,
+Yet that whip's name too noble
+    Then to tell.
+
+Magnanimous of bird
+    By boy descried,
+To sing unto the stone
+    Of which it died.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+WHO?
+
+My friend must be a bird,
+    Because it flies!
+Mortal my friend must be,
+    Because it dies!
+Barbs has it, like a bee.
+Ah, curious friend,
+    Thou puzzlest me!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+He touched me, so I live to know
+That such a day, permitted so,
+  I groped upon his breast.
+It was a boundless place to me,
+And silenced, as the awful sea
+  Puts minor streams to rest.
+
+And now, I'm different from before,
+As if I breathed superior air,
+  Or brushed a royal gown;
+My feet, too, that had wandered so,
+My gypsy face transfigured now
+  To tenderer renown.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+DREAMS.
+
+Let me not mar that perfect dream
+  By an auroral stain,
+But so adjust my daily night
+  That it will come again.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+NUMEN LUMEN.
+
+I live with him, I see his face;
+  I go no more away
+For visitor, or sundown;
+  Death's single privacy,
+
+The only one forestalling mine,
+  And that by right that he
+Presents a claim invisible,
+  No wedlock granted me.
+
+I live with him, I hear his voice,
+  I stand alive to-day
+To witness to the certainty
+  Of immortality
+
+Taught me by Time, -- the lower way,
+  Conviction every day, --
+That life like this is endless,
+  Be judgment what it may.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+LONGING.
+
+I envy seas whereon he rides,
+  I envy spokes of wheels
+Of chariots that him convey,
+  I envy speechless hills
+
+That gaze upon his journey;
+  How easy all can see
+What is forbidden utterly
+  As heaven, unto me!
+
+I envy nests of sparrows
+  That dot his distant eaves,
+The wealthy fly upon his pane,
+  The happy, happy leaves
+
+That just abroad his window
+  Have summer's leave to be,
+The earrings of Pizarro
+  Could not obtain for me.
+
+I envy light that wakes him,
+  And bells that boldly ring
+To tell him it is noon abroad, --
+  Myself his noon could bring,
+
+Yet interdict my blossom
+  And abrogate my bee,
+Lest noon in everlasting night
+  Drop Gabriel and me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+WEDDED.
+
+A solemn thing it was, I said,
+  A woman white to be,
+And wear, if God should count me fit,
+  Her hallowed mystery.
+
+A timid thing to drop a life
+  Into the purple well,
+Too plummetless that it come back
+  Eternity until.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III. NATURE.
+
+
+I.
+
+NATURE'S CHANGES.
+
+The springtime's pallid landscape
+  Will glow like bright bouquet,
+Though drifted deep in parian
+  The village lies to-day.
+
+The lilacs, bending many a year,
+  With purple load will hang;
+The bees will not forget the tune
+  Their old forefathers sang.
+
+The rose will redden in the bog,
+  The aster on the hill
+Her everlasting fashion set,
+  And covenant gentians frill,
+
+Till summer folds her miracle
+  As women do their gown,
+Or priests adjust the symbols
+  When sacrament is done.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE TULIP.
+
+She slept beneath a tree
+  Remembered but by me.
+I touched her cradle mute;
+She recognized the foot,
+Put on her carmine suit, --
+  And see!
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A light exists in spring
+  Not present on the year
+At any other period.
+  When March is scarcely here
+
+A color stands abroad
+  On solitary hills
+That science cannot overtake,
+  But human nature feels.
+
+It waits upon the lawn;
+  It shows the furthest tree
+Upon the furthest slope we know;
+  It almost speaks to me.
+
+Then, as horizons step,
+  Or noons report away,
+Without the formula of sound,
+  It passes, and we stay:
+
+A quality of loss
+  Affecting our content,
+As trade had suddenly encroached
+  Upon a sacrament.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE WAKING YEAR.
+
+A lady red upon the hill
+  Her annual secret keeps;
+A lady white within the field
+  In placid lily sleeps!
+
+The tidy breezes with their brooms
+  Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!
+Prithee, my pretty housewives!
+  Who may expected be?
+
+The neighbors do not yet suspect!
+  The woods exchange a smile --
+Orchard, and buttercup, and bird --
+  In such a little while!
+
+And yet how still the landscape stands,
+  How nonchalant the wood,
+As if the resurrection
+  Were nothing very odd!
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+TO MARCH.
+
+Dear March, come in!
+How glad I am!
+I looked for you before.
+Put down your hat --
+You must have walked --
+How out of breath you are!
+Dear March, how are you?
+And the rest?
+Did you leave Nature well?
+Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
+I have so much to tell!
+
+I got your letter, and the birds';
+The maples never knew
+That you were coming, -- I declare,
+How red their faces grew!
+But, March, forgive me --
+And all those hills
+You left for me to hue;
+There was no purple suitable,
+You took it all with you.
+
+Who knocks? That April!
+Lock the door!
+I will not be pursued!
+He stayed away a year, to call
+When I am occupied.
+But trifles look so trivial
+As soon as you have come,
+That blame is just as dear as praise
+And praise as mere as blame.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+MARCH.
+
+We like March, his shoes are purple,
+  He is new and high;
+Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
+  Makes he forest dry;
+Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
+  And begets her spot.
+Stands the sun so close and mighty
+  That our minds are hot.
+News is he of all the others;
+  Bold it were to die
+With the blue-birds buccaneering
+  On his British sky.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+DAWN.
+
+Not knowing when the dawn will come
+  I open every door;
+Or has it feathers like a bird,
+  Or billows like a shore?
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+A murmur in the trees to note,
+  Not loud enough for wind;
+A star not far enough to seek,
+  Nor near enough to find;
+
+A long, long yellow on the lawn,
+  A hubbub as of feet;
+Not audible, as ours to us,
+  But dapperer, more sweet;
+
+A hurrying home of little men
+  To houses unperceived, --
+All this, and more, if I should tell,
+  Would never be believed.
+
+Of robins in the trundle bed
+  How many I espy
+Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings,
+  Although I heard them try!
+
+But then I promised ne'er to tell;
+  How could I break my word?
+So go your way and I'll go mine, --
+  No fear you'll miss the road.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Morning is the place for dew,
+  Corn is made at noon,
+After dinner light for flowers,
+  Dukes for setting sun!
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
+  The bushes they were bells;
+I could not find a privacy
+  From Nature's sentinels.
+
+In cave if I presumed to hide,
+  The walls began to tell;
+Creation seemed a mighty crack
+  To make me visible.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+A ROSE.
+
+A sepal, petal, and a thorn
+  Upon a common summer's morn,
+A flash of dew, a bee or two,
+A breeze
+A caper in the trees, --
+  And I'm a rose!
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+High from the earth I heard a bird;
+  He trod upon the trees
+As he esteemed them trifles,
+  And then he spied a breeze,
+And situated softly
+  Upon a pile of wind
+Which in a perturbation
+  Nature had left behind.
+A joyous-going fellow
+  I gathered from his talk,
+Which both of benediction
+  And badinage partook,
+Without apparent burden,
+  I learned, in leafy wood
+He was the faithful father
+  Of a dependent brood;
+And this untoward transport
+  His remedy for care, --
+A contrast to our respites.
+  How different we are!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+COBWEBS.
+
+The spider as an artist
+  Has never been employed
+Though his surpassing merit
+  Is freely certified
+
+By every broom and Bridget
+  Throughout a Christian land.
+Neglected son of genius,
+  I take thee by the hand.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+A WELL.
+
+What mystery pervades a well!
+  The water lives so far,
+Like neighbor from another world
+  Residing in a jar.
+
+The grass does not appear afraid;
+  I often wonder he
+Can stand so close and look so bold
+  At what is dread to me.
+
+Related somehow they may be, --
+  The sedge stands next the sea,
+Where he is floorless, yet of fear
+  No evidence gives he.
+
+But nature is a stranger yet;
+  The ones that cite her most
+Have never passed her haunted house,
+  Nor simplified her ghost.
+
+To pity those that know her not
+  Is helped by the regret
+That those who know her, know her less
+  The nearer her they get.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --
+One clover, and a bee,
+And revery.
+The revery alone will do
+If bees are few.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+THE WIND.
+
+It's like the light, --
+  A fashionless delight
+It's like the bee, --
+  A dateless melody.
+
+It's like the woods,
+  Private like breeze,
+Phraseless, yet it stirs
+  The proudest trees.
+
+It's like the morning, --
+  Best when it's done, --
+The everlasting clocks
+  Chime noon.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+A dew sufficed itself
+  And satisfied a leaf,
+And felt, 'how vast a destiny!
+  How trivial is life!'
+
+The sun went out to work,
+  The day went out to play,
+But not again that dew was seen
+  By physiognomy.
+
+Whether by day abducted,
+  Or emptied by the sun
+Into the sea, in passing,
+  Eternally unknown.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE WOODPECKER.
+
+His bill an auger is,
+  His head, a cap and frill.
+He laboreth at every tree, --
+  A worm his utmost goal.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+A SNAKE.
+
+Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
+  Until we meet a snake;
+'T is then we sigh for houses,
+  And our departure take
+At that enthralling gallop
+  That only childhood knows.
+A snake is summer's treason,
+  And guile is where it goes.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+Could I but ride indefinite,
+  As doth the meadow-bee,
+And visit only where I liked,
+  And no man visit me,
+
+And flirt all day with buttercups,
+  And marry whom I may,
+And dwell a little everywhere,
+  Or better, run away
+
+With no police to follow,
+  Or chase me if I do,
+Till I should jump peninsulas
+  To get away from you, --
+
+I said, but just to be a bee
+  Upon a raft of air,
+And row in nowhere all day long,
+  And anchor off the bar,--
+What liberty! So captives deem
+  Who tight in dungeons are.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+THE MOON.
+
+The moon was but a chin of gold
+  A night or two ago,
+And now she turns her perfect face
+  Upon the world below.
+
+Her forehead is of amplest blond;
+  Her cheek like beryl stone;
+Her eye unto the summer dew
+  The likest I have known.
+
+Her lips of amber never part;
+  But what must be the smile
+Upon her friend she could bestow
+  Were such her silver will!
+
+And what a privilege to be
+  But the remotest star!
+For certainly her way might pass
+  Beside your twinkling door.
+
+Her bonnet is the firmament,
+  The universe her shoe,
+The stars the trinkets at her belt,
+  Her dimities of blue.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+THE BAT.
+
+The bat is dun with wrinkled wings
+  Like fallow article,
+And not a song pervades his lips,
+  Or none perceptible.
+
+His small umbrella, quaintly halved,
+  Describing in the air
+An arc alike inscrutable, --
+  Elate philosopher!
+
+Deputed from what firmament
+  Of what astute abode,
+Empowered with what malevolence
+  Auspiciously withheld.
+
+To his adroit Creator
+  Ascribe no less the praise;
+Beneficent, believe me,
+  His eccentricities.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+THE BALLOON.
+
+You've seen balloons set, haven't you?
+  So stately they ascend
+It is as swans discarded you
+  For duties diamond.
+
+Their liquid feet go softly out
+  Upon a sea of blond;
+They spurn the air as 't were too mean
+  For creatures so renowned.
+
+Their ribbons just beyond the eye,
+  They struggle some for breath,
+And yet the crowd applauds below;
+  They would not encore death.
+
+The gilded creature strains and spins,
+  Trips frantic in a tree,
+Tears open her imperial veins
+  And tumbles in the sea.
+
+The crowd retire with an oath
+  The dust in streets goes down,
+And clerks in counting-rooms observe,
+  ''T was only a balloon.'
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+EVENING.
+
+The cricket sang,
+And set the sun,
+And workmen finished, one by one,
+  Their seam the day upon.
+
+The low grass loaded with the dew,
+The twilight stood as strangers do
+With hat in hand, polite and new,
+  To stay as if, or go.
+
+A vastness, as a neighbor, came, --
+A wisdom without face or name,
+A peace, as hemispheres at home, --
+  And so the night became.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+COCOON.
+
+Drab habitation of whom?
+Tabernacle or tomb,
+Or dome of worm,
+Or porch of gnome,
+Or some elf's catacomb?
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+SUNSET.
+
+A sloop of amber slips away
+  Upon an ether sea,
+And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
+  The son of ecstasy.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+AURORA.
+
+Of bronze and blaze
+  The north, to-night!
+  So adequate its forms,
+So preconcerted with itself,
+  So distant to alarms, --
+An unconcern so sovereign
+  To universe, or me,
+It paints my simple spirit
+  With tints of majesty,
+Till I take vaster attitudes,
+  And strut upon my stem,
+Disdaining men and oxygen,
+  For arrogance of them.
+
+My splendors are menagerie;
+  But their competeless show
+Will entertain the centuries
+  When I am, long ago,
+An island in dishonored grass,
+  Whom none but daisies know.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+THE COMING OF NIGHT.
+
+How the old mountains drip with sunset,
+  And the brake of dun!
+How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
+  By the wizard sun!
+
+How the old steeples hand the scarlet,
+  Till the ball is full, --
+Have I the lip of the flamingo
+  That I dare to tell?
+
+Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,
+  Touching all the grass
+With a departing, sapphire feature,
+  As if a duchess pass!
+
+How a small dusk crawls on the village
+  Till the houses blot;
+And the odd flambeaux no men carry
+  Glimmer on the spot!
+
+Now it is night in nest and kennel,
+  And where was the wood,
+Just a dome of abyss is nodding
+  Into solitude! --
+
+These are the visions baffled Guido;
+  Titian never told;
+Domenichino dropped the pencil,
+  Powerless to unfold.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+AFTERMATH.
+
+The murmuring of bees has ceased;
+  But murmuring of some
+Posterior, prophetic,
+  Has simultaneous come, --
+
+The lower metres of the year,
+  When nature's laugh is done, --
+The Revelations of the book
+  Whose Genesis is June.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.
+
+I.
+
+This world is not conclusion;
+  A sequel stands beyond,
+Invisible, as music,
+  But positive, as sound.
+It beckons and it baffles;
+  Philosophies don't know,
+And through a riddle, at the last,
+  Sagacity must go.
+To guess it puzzles scholars;
+  To gain it, men have shown
+Contempt of generations,
+  And crucifixion known.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+We learn in the retreating
+  How vast an one
+Was recently among us.
+  A perished sun
+
+Endears in the departure
+  How doubly more
+Than all the golden presence
+  It was before!
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+They say that 'time assuages,' --
+  Time never did assuage;
+An actual suffering strengthens,
+  As sinews do, with age.
+
+Time is a test of trouble,
+  But not a remedy.
+If such it prove, it prove too
+  There was no malady.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+We cover thee, sweet face.
+  Not that we tire of thee,
+But that thyself fatigue of us;
+  Remember, as thou flee,
+We follow thee until
+  Thou notice us no more,
+And then, reluctant, turn away
+  To con thee o'er and o'er,
+And blame the scanty love
+  We were content to show,
+Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold
+  If thou would'st take it now.
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+ENDING.
+
+That is solemn we have ended, --
+  Be it but a play,
+Or a glee among the garrets,
+  Or a holiday,
+
+Or a leaving home; or later,
+  Parting with a world
+We have understood, for better
+  Still it be unfurled.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+The stimulus, beyond the grave
+  His countenance to see,
+Supports me like imperial drams
+  Afforded royally.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Given in marriage unto thee,
+  Oh, thou celestial host!
+Bride of the Father and the Son,
+  Bride of the Holy Ghost!
+
+Other betrothal shall dissolve,
+  Wedlock of will decay;
+Only the keeper of this seal
+  Conquers mortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+That such have died enables us
+  The tranquiller to die;
+That such have lived, certificate
+  For immortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+They won't frown always, -- some sweet day
+  When I forget to tease,
+They'll recollect how cold I looked,
+  And how I just said 'please.'
+
+Then they will hasten to the door
+  To call the little child,
+Who cannot thank them, for the ice
+  That on her lisping piled.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+IMMORTALITY.
+
+It is an honorable thought,
+  And makes one lift one's hat,
+As one encountered gentlefolk
+  Upon a daily street,
+
+That we've immortal place,
+  Though pyramids decay,
+And kingdoms, like the orchard,
+  Flit russetly away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+The distance that the dead have gone
+  Does not at first appear;
+Their coming back seems possible
+  For many an ardent year.
+
+And then, that we have followed them
+  We more than half suspect,
+So intimate have we become
+  With their dear retrospect.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+How dare the robins sing,
+  When men and women hear
+Who since they went to their account
+  Have settled with the year! --
+Paid all that life had earned
+  In one consummate bill,
+And now, what life or death can do
+  Is immaterial.
+Insulting is the sun
+  To him whose mortal light,
+Beguiled of immortality,
+  Bequeaths him to the night.
+In deference to him
+  Extinct be every hum,
+Whose garden wrestles with the dew,
+  At daybreak overcome!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+DEATH.
+
+Death is like the insect
+  Menacing the tree,
+Competent to kill it,
+  But decoyed may be.
+
+Bait it with the balsam,
+  Seek it with the knife,
+Baffle, if it cost you
+  Everything in life.
+
+Then, if it have burrowed
+  Out of reach of skill,
+Ring the tree and leave it, --
+  'T is the vermin's will.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+UNWARNED.
+
+'T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou
+  No station in the day?
+'T was not thy wont to hinder so, --
+  Retrieve thine industry.
+
+'T is noon, my little maid, alas!
+  And art thou sleeping yet?
+The lily waiting to be wed,
+  The bee, dost thou forget?
+
+My little maid, 't is night; alas,
+  That night should be to thee
+Instead of morning! Hadst thou broached
+  Thy little plan to me,
+Dissuade thee if I could not, sweet,
+  I might have aided thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+Each that we lose takes part of us;
+  A crescent still abides,
+Which like the moon, some turbid night,
+  Is summoned by the tides.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Not any higher stands the grave
+  For heroes than for men;
+Not any nearer for the child
+  Than numb three-score and ten.
+
+This latest leisure equal lulls
+  The beggar and his queen;
+Propitiate this democrat
+  By summer's gracious mien.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+ASLEEP.
+
+As far from pity as complaint,
+  As cool to speech as stone,
+As numb to revelation
+  As if my trade were bone.
+
+As far from time as history,
+  As near yourself to-day
+As children to the rainbow's scarf,
+  Or sunset's yellow play
+
+To eyelids in the sepulchre.
+  How still the dancer lies,
+While color's revelations break,
+  And blaze the butterflies!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE SPIRIT.
+
+'T is whiter than an Indian pipe,
+  'T is dimmer than a lace;
+No stature has it, like a fog,
+  When you approach the place.
+
+Not any voice denotes it here,
+  Or intimates it there;
+A spirit, how doth it accost?
+  What customs hath the air?
+
+This limitless hyperbole
+  Each one of us shall be;
+'T is drama, if (hypothesis)
+  It be not tragedy!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+THE MONUMENT.
+
+She laid her docile crescent down,
+  And this mechanic stone
+Still states, to dates that have forgot,
+  The news that she is gone.
+
+So constant to its stolid trust,
+  The shaft that never knew,
+It shames the constancy that fled
+  Before its emblem flew.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+Bless God, he went as soldiers,
+  His musket on his breast;
+Grant, God, he charge the bravest
+  Of all the martial blest.
+
+Please God, might I behold him
+  In epauletted white,
+I should not fear the foe then,
+  I should not fear the fight.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+Immortal is an ample word
+  When what we need is by,
+But when it leaves us for a time,
+  'T is a necessity.
+
+Of heaven above the firmest proof
+  We fundamental know,
+Except for its marauding hand,
+  It had been heaven below.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+Where every bird is bold to go,
+  And bees abashless play,
+The foreigner before he knocks
+  Must thrust the tears away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+The grave my little cottage is,
+  Where, keeping house for thee,
+I make my parlor orderly,
+  And lay the marble tea,
+
+For two divided, briefly,
+  A cycle, it may be,
+Till everlasting life unite
+  In strong society.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+This was in the white of the year,
+  That was in the green,
+Drifts were as difficult then to think
+  As daisies now to be seen.
+
+Looking back is best that is left,
+  Or if it be before,
+Retrospection is prospect's half,
+  Sometimes almost more.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+Sweet hours have perished here;
+  This is a mighty room;
+Within its precincts hopes have played, --
+  Now shadows in the tomb.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+Me! Come! My dazzled face
+In such a shining place!
+
+Me! Hear! My foreign ear
+The sounds of welcome near!
+
+The saints shall meet
+Our bashful feet.
+
+My holiday shall be
+That they remember me;
+
+My paradise, the fame
+That they pronounce my name.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+INVISIBLE.
+
+From us she wandered now a year,
+  Her tarrying unknown;
+If wilderness prevent her feet,
+  Or that ethereal zone
+
+No eye hath seen and lived,
+  We ignorant must be.
+We only know what time of year
+  We took the mystery.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+I wish I knew that woman's name,
+  So, when she comes this way,
+To hold my life, and hold my ears,
+  For fear I hear her say
+
+She's 'sorry I am dead,' again,
+  Just when the grave and I
+Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, --
+  Our only lullaby.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+TRYING TO FORGET.
+
+Bereaved of all, I went abroad,
+  No less bereaved to be
+Upon a new peninsula, --
+  The grave preceded me,
+
+Obtained my lodgings ere myself,
+  And when I sought my bed,
+The grave it was, reposed upon
+  The pillow for my head.
+
+I waked, to find it first awake,
+  I rose, -- it followed me;
+I tried to drop it in the crowd,
+  To lose it in the sea,
+
+In cups of artificial drowse
+  To sleep its shape away, --
+The grave was finished, but the spade
+  Remained in memory.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+I felt a funeral in my brain,
+  And mourners, to and fro,
+Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
+  That sense was breaking through.
+
+And when they all were seated,
+  A service like a drum
+Kept beating, beating, till I thought
+  My mind was going numb.
+
+And then I heard them lift a box,
+  And creak across my soul
+With those same boots of lead, again.
+  Then space began to toll
+
+As all the heavens were a bell,
+  And Being but an ear,
+And I and silence some strange race,
+  Wrecked, solitary, here.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+I meant to find her when I came;
+  Death had the same design;
+But the success was his, it seems,
+  And the discomfit mine.
+
+I meant to tell her how I longed
+  For just this single time;
+But Death had told her so the first,
+  And she had hearkened him.
+
+To wander now is my abode;
+  To rest, -- to rest would be
+A privilege of hurricane
+  To memory and me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+WAITING.
+
+I sing to use the waiting,
+  My bonnet but to tie,
+And shut the door unto my house;
+  No more to do have I,
+
+Till, his best step approaching,
+  We journey to the day,
+And tell each other how we sang
+  To keep the dark away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+A sickness of this world it most occasions
+  When best men die;
+A wishfulness their far condition
+  To occupy.
+
+A chief indifference, as foreign
+  A world must be
+Themselves forsake contented,
+  For Deity.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+Superfluous were the sun
+  When excellence is dead;
+He were superfluous every day,
+  For every day is said
+
+That syllable whose faith
+  Just saves it from despair,
+And whose 'I'll meet you' hesitates
+  If love inquire, 'Where?'
+
+Upon his dateless fame
+  Our periods may lie,
+As stars that drop anonymous
+  From an abundant sky.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+So proud she was to die
+  It made us all ashamed
+That what we cherished, so unknown
+  To her desire seemed.
+
+So satisfied to go
+  Where none of us should be,
+Immediately, that anguish stooped
+  Almost to jealousy.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+FAREWELL.
+
+Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,
+  Then I am ready to go!
+Just a look at the horses --
+  Rapid! That will do!
+
+Put me in on the firmest side,
+  So I shall never fall;
+For we must ride to the Judgment,
+  And it's partly down hill.
+
+But never I mind the bridges,
+  And never I mind the sea;
+Held fast in everlasting race
+  By my own choice and thee.
+
+Good-by to the life I used to live,
+  And the world I used to know;
+And kiss the hills for me, just once;
+  Now I am ready to go!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+The dying need but little, dear, --
+  A glass of water's all,
+A flower's unobtrusive face
+  To punctuate the wall,
+
+A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,
+  And certainly that one
+No color in the rainbow
+  Perceives when you are gone.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+DEAD.
+
+There's something quieter than sleep
+  Within this inner room!
+It wears a sprig upon its breast,
+  And will not tell its name.
+
+Some touch it and some kiss it,
+  Some chafe its idle hand;
+It has a simple gravity
+  I do not understand!
+
+While simple-hearted neighbors
+  Chat of the 'early dead,'
+We, prone to periphrasis,
+  Remark that birds have fled!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+The soul should always stand ajar,
+  That if the heaven inquire,
+He will not be obliged to wait,
+  Or shy of troubling her.
+
+Depart, before the host has slid
+  The bolt upon the door,
+To seek for the accomplished guest, --
+  Her visitor no more.
+
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+Three weeks passed since I had seen her, --
+  Some disease had vexed;
+'T was with text and village singing
+  I beheld her next,
+
+And a company -- our pleasure
+  To discourse alone;
+Gracious now to me as any,
+  Gracious unto none.
+
+Borne, without dissent of either,
+  To the parish night;
+Of the separated people
+  Which are out of sight?
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+I breathed enough to learn the trick,
+  And now, removed from air,
+I simulate the breath so well,
+  That one, to be quite sure
+
+The lungs are stirless, must descend
+  Among the cunning cells,
+And touch the pantomime himself.
+  How cool the bellows feels!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+I wonder if the sepulchre
+  Is not a lonesome way,
+When men and boys, and larks and June
+  Go down the fields to hay!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+JOY IN DEATH.
+
+If tolling bell I ask the cause.
+  'A soul has gone to God,'
+I'm answered in a lonesome tone;
+  Is heaven then so sad?
+
+That bells should joyful ring to tell
+  A soul had gone to heaven,
+Would seem to me the proper way
+  A good news should be given.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+If I may have it when it's dead
+  I will contented be;
+If just as soon as breath is out
+  It shall belong to me,
+
+Until they lock it in the grave,
+  'T is bliss I cannot weigh,
+For though they lock thee in the grave,
+  Myself can hold the key.
+
+Think of it, lover! I and thee
+  Permitted face to face to be;
+After a life, a death we'll say, --
+  For death was that, and this is thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+Before the ice is in the pools,
+  Before the skaters go,
+Or any cheek at nightfall
+  Is tarnished by the snow,
+
+Before the fields have finished,
+  Before the Christmas tree,
+Wonder upon wonder
+  Will arrive to me!
+
+What we touch the hems of
+  On a summer's day;
+What is only walking
+  Just a bridge away;
+
+That which sings so, speaks so,
+  When there's no one here, --
+Will the frock I wept in
+  Answer me to wear?
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+DYING.
+
+I heard a fly buzz when I died;
+  The stillness round my form
+Was like the stillness in the air
+  Between the heaves of storm.
+
+The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
+  And breaths were gathering sure
+For that last onset, when the king
+  Be witnessed in his power.
+
+I willed my keepsakes, signed away
+  What portion of me I
+Could make assignable, -- and then
+  There interposed a fly,
+
+With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
+  Between the light and me;
+And then the windows failed, and then
+  I could not see to see.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+Adrift! A little boat adrift!
+  And night is coming down!
+Will no one guide a little boat
+  Unto the nearest town?
+
+So sailors say, on yesterday,
+  Just as the dusk was brown,
+One little boat gave up its strife,
+  And gurgled down and down.
+
+But angels say, on yesterday,
+  Just as the dawn was red,
+One little boat o'erspent with gales
+Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
+  Exultant, onward sped!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+There's been a death in the opposite house
+  As lately as to-day.
+I know it by the numb look
+  Such houses have alway.
+
+The neighbors rustle in and out,
+  The doctor drives away.
+A window opens like a pod,
+  Abrupt, mechanically;
+
+Somebody flings a mattress out, --
+  The children hurry by;
+They wonder if It died on that, --
+  I used to when a boy.
+
+The minister goes stiffly in
+  As if the house were his,
+And he owned all the mourners now,
+  And little boys besides;
+
+And then the milliner, and the man
+  Of the appalling trade,
+To take the measure of the house.
+  There'll be that dark parade
+
+Of tassels and of coaches soon;
+  It's easy as a sign, --
+The intuition of the news
+  In just a country town.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+We never know we go, -- when we are going
+  We jest and shut the door;
+Fate following behind us bolts it,
+  And we accost no more.
+
+
+
+
+L.
+
+THE SOUL'S STORM.
+
+It struck me every day
+  The lightning was as new
+As if the cloud that instant slit
+  And let the fire through.
+
+It burned me in the night,
+  It blistered in my dream;
+It sickened fresh upon my sight
+  With every morning's beam.
+
+I thought that storm was brief, --
+  The maddest, quickest by;
+But Nature lost the date of this,
+  And left it in the sky.
+
+
+
+
+
+LI.
+
+Water is taught by thirst;
+Land, by the oceans passed;
+  Transport, by throe;
+Peace, by its battles told;
+Love, by memorial mould;
+  Birds, by the snow.
+
+
+
+
+LII.
+
+THIRST.
+
+We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act;
+  And later, when we die,
+A little water supplicate
+  Of fingers going by.
+
+It intimates the finer want,
+  Whose adequate supply
+Is that great water in the west
+  Termed immortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+A clock stopped -- not the mantel's;
+  Geneva's farthest skill
+Can't put the puppet bowing
+  That just now dangled still.
+
+An awe came on the trinket!
+  The figures hunched with pain,
+Then quivered out of decimals
+  Into degreeless noon.
+
+It will not stir for doctors,
+  This pendulum of snow;
+The shopman importunes it,
+  While cool, concernless No
+
+Nods from the gilded pointers,
+  Nods from the seconds slim,
+Decades of arrogance between
+  The dial life and him.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIV.
+
+CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S GRAVE.
+
+All overgrown by cunning moss,
+  All interspersed with weed,
+The little cage of 'Currer Bell,'
+  In quiet Haworth laid.
+
+This bird, observing others,
+  When frosts too sharp became,
+Retire to other latitudes,
+  Quietly did the same,
+
+But differed in returning;
+  Since Yorkshire hills are green,
+Yet not in all the nests I meet
+  Can nightingale be seen.
+
+Gathered from many wanderings,
+  Gethsemane can tell
+Through what transporting anguish
+  She reached the asphodel!
+
+Soft fall the sounds of Eden
+  Upon her puzzled ear;
+Oh, what an afternoon for heaven,
+  When 'Brontë' entered there!
+
+
+
+
+
+LV.
+
+A toad can die of light!
+Death is the common right
+  Of toads and men, --
+Of earl and midge
+The privilege.
+  Why swagger then?
+The gnat's supremacy
+Is large as thine.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVI.
+
+Far from love the Heavenly Father
+  Leads the chosen child;
+Oftener through realm of briar
+  Than the meadow mild,
+
+Oftener by the claw of dragon
+  Than the hand of friend,
+Guides the little one predestined
+  To the native land.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVII.
+
+SLEEPING.
+
+A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
+  That makes no show for dawn
+By stretch of limb or stir of lid, --
+  An independent one.
+
+Was ever idleness like this?
+  Within a hut of stone
+To bask the centuries away
+  Nor once look up for noon?
+
+
+
+
+
+LVIII.
+
+RETROSPECT.
+
+'T was just this time last year I died.
+  I know I heard the corn,
+When I was carried by the farms, --
+  It had the tassels on.
+
+I thought how yellow it would look
+  When Richard went to mill;
+And then I wanted to get out,
+  But something held my will.
+
+I thought just how red apples wedged
+  The stubble's joints between;
+And carts went stooping round the fields
+  To take the pumpkins in.
+
+I wondered which would miss me least,
+  And when Thanksgiving came,
+If father'd multiply the plates
+  To make an even sum.
+
+And if my stocking hung too high,
+  Would it blur the Christmas glee,
+That not a Santa Claus could reach
+  The altitude of me?
+
+But this sort grieved myself, and so
+  I thought how it would be
+When just this time, some perfect year,
+  Themselves should come to me.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIX.
+
+ETERNITY.
+
+On this wondrous sea,
+Sailing silently,
+  Ho! pilot, ho!
+Knowest thou the shore
+Where no breakers roar,
+  Where the storm is o'er?
+
+In the silent west
+Many sails at rest,
+  Their anchors fast;
+Thither I pilot thee, --
+Land, ho! Eternity!
+  Ashore at last!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems: Third Series, by Emily Dickinson
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS: THIRD SERIES ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems: Third Series, by Emily Dickinson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poems: Third Series
+
+Author: Emily Dickinson
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2004 [EBook #12241]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS: THIRD SERIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox.com>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+by EMILY DICKINSON
+
+Third Series
+
+
+
+
+Edited by
+
+MABEL LOOMIS TODD
+
+
+
+
+
+    It's all I have to bring to-day,
+      This, and my heart beside,
+    This, and my heart, and all the fields,
+      And all the meadows wide.
+    Be sure you count, should I forget, --
+      Some one the sum could tell, --
+    This, and my heart, and all the bees
+      Which in the clover dwell.
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+The intellectual activity of Emily Dickinson was so great that a
+large and characteristic choice is still possible among her
+literary material, and this third volume of her verses is put
+forth in response to the repeated wish of the admirers of her
+peculiar genius. Much of Emily Dickinson's prose was rhythmic,
+--even rhymed, though frequently not set apart in lines.
+
+Also many verses, written as such, were sent to friends in
+letters; these were published in 1894, in the volumes of her
+_Letters_. It has not been necessary, however, to include them in
+this Series, and all have been omitted, except three or four
+exceptionally strong ones, as "A Book," and "With Flowers."
+
+There is internal evidence that many of the poems were simply
+spontaneous flashes of insight, apparently unrelated to outward
+circumstance. Others, however, had an obvious personal origin;
+for example, the verses "I had a Guinea golden," which seem to
+have been sent to some friend travelling in Europe, as a dainty
+reminder of letter-writing delinquencies. The surroundings in
+which any of Emily Dickinson's verses are known to have been
+written usually serve to explain them clearly; but in general the
+present volume is full of thoughts needing no interpretation to
+those who apprehend this scintillating spirit.
+
+                                        M. L. T.
+
+AMHERST, _October_, 1896.
+
+
+
+
+I. LIFE.
+
+
+POEMS.
+
+I.
+
+REAL RICHES.
+
+'T is little I could care for pearls
+  Who own the ample sea;
+Or brooches, when the Emperor
+  With rubies pelteth me;
+
+Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines;
+  Or diamonds, when I see
+A diadem to fit a dome
+  Continual crowning me.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+SUPERIORITY TO FATE.
+
+Superiority to fate
+  Is difficult to learn.
+'T is not conferred by any,
+  But possible to earn
+
+A pittance at a time,
+  Until, to her surprise,
+The soul with strict economy
+  Subsists till Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+HOPE.
+
+Hope is a subtle glutton;
+  He feeds upon the fair;
+And yet, inspected closely,
+  What abstinence is there!
+
+His is the halcyon table
+  That never seats but one,
+And whatsoever is consumed
+  The same amounts remain.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
+
+I.
+
+Forbidden fruit a flavor has
+  That lawful orchards mocks;
+How luscious lies the pea within
+  The pod that Duty locks!
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
+
+II.
+
+Heaven is what I cannot reach!
+  The apple on the tree,
+Provided it do hopeless hang,
+  That 'heaven' is, to me.
+
+The color on the cruising cloud,
+  The interdicted ground
+Behind the hill, the house behind, --
+  There Paradise is found!
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A WORD.
+
+A word is dead
+When it is said,
+  Some say.
+I say it just
+Begins to live
+  That day.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+To venerate the simple days
+  Which lead the seasons by,
+Needs but to remember
+  That from you or me
+They may take the trifle
+  Termed mortality!
+
+To invest existence with a stately air,
+Needs but to remember
+  That the acorn there
+Is the egg of forests
+  For the upper air!
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+LIFE'S TRADES.
+
+It's such a little thing to weep,
+  So short a thing to sigh;
+And yet by trades the size of these
+  We men and women die!
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Drowning is not so pitiful
+  As the attempt to rise.
+Three times, 't is said, a sinking man
+  Comes up to face the skies,
+And then declines forever
+  To that abhorred abode
+Where hope and he part company, --
+  For he is grasped of God.
+The Maker's cordial visage,
+  However good to see,
+Is shunned, we must admit it,
+  Like an adversity.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+How still the bells in steeples stand,
+  Till, swollen with the sky,
+They leap upon their silver feet
+  In frantic melody!
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+If the foolish call them 'flowers,'
+  Need the wiser tell?
+If the savans 'classify' them,
+  It is just as well!
+
+Those who read the Revelations
+  Must not criticise
+Those who read the same edition
+  With beclouded eyes!
+
+Could we stand with that old Moses
+  Canaan denied, --
+Scan, like him, the stately landscape
+  On the other side, --
+
+Doubtless we should deem superfluous
+  Many sciences
+Not pursued by learned angels
+  In scholastic skies!
+
+Low amid that glad _Belles lettres_
+  Grant that we may stand,
+Stars, amid profound Galaxies,
+  At that grand 'Right hand'!
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+A SYLLABLE.
+
+Could mortal lip divine
+  The undeveloped freight
+Of a delivered syllable,
+  'T would crumble with the weight.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+PARTING.
+
+My life closed twice before its close;
+  It yet remains to see
+If Immortality unveil
+  A third event to me,
+
+So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
+  As these that twice befell.
+Parting is all we know of heaven,
+  And all we need of hell.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+ASPIRATION.
+
+We never know how high we are
+  Till we are called to rise;
+And then, if we are true to plan,
+  Our statures touch the skies.
+
+The heroism we recite
+  Would be a daily thing,
+Did not ourselves the cubits warp
+  For fear to be a king.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE INEVITABLE.
+
+While I was fearing it, it came,
+  But came with less of fear,
+Because that fearing it so long
+  Had almost made it dear.
+There is a fitting a dismay,
+  A fitting a despair.
+'Tis harder knowing it is due,
+  Than knowing it is here.
+The trying on the utmost,
+  The morning it is new,
+Is terribler than wearing it
+  A whole existence through.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+A BOOK.
+
+There is no frigate like a book
+  To take us lands away,
+Nor any coursers like a page
+  Of prancing poetry.
+This traverse may the poorest take
+  Without oppress of toll;
+How frugal is the chariot
+  That bears a human soul!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+Who has not found the heaven below
+  Will fail of it above.
+God's residence is next to mine,
+  His furniture is love.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+A PORTRAIT.
+
+A face devoid of love or grace,
+  A hateful, hard, successful face,
+A face with which a stone
+  Would feel as thoroughly at ease
+As were they old acquaintances, --
+  First time together thrown.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+I HAD A GUINEA GOLDEN.
+
+I had a guinea golden;
+  I lost it in the sand,
+And though the sum was simple,
+  And pounds were in the land,
+Still had it such a value
+  Unto my frugal eye,
+That when I could not find it
+  I sat me down to sigh.
+
+I had a crimson robin
+  Who sang full many a day,
+But when the woods were painted
+  He, too, did fly away.
+Time brought me other robins, --
+  Their ballads were the same, --
+Still for my missing troubadour
+  I kept the 'house at hame.'
+
+I had a star in heaven;
+  One Pleiad was its name,
+And when I was not heeding
+  It wandered from the same.
+And though the skies are crowded,
+  And all the night ashine,
+I do not care about it,
+  Since none of them are mine.
+
+My story has a moral:
+  I have a missing friend, --
+Pleiad its name, and robin,
+  And guinea in the sand, --
+And when this mournful ditty,
+  Accompanied with tear,
+Shall meet the eye of traitor
+  In country far from here,
+Grant that repentance solemn
+  May seize upon his mind,
+And he no consolation
+  Beneath the sun may find.
+
+NOTE. -- This poem may have had, like many others, a
+personal origin. It is more than probable that it was
+sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty
+reminder of letter-writing delinquencies.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
+
+From all the jails the boys and girls
+  Ecstatically leap, --
+Beloved, only afternoon
+  That prison doesn't keep.
+
+They storm the earth and stun the air,
+  A mob of solid bliss.
+Alas! that frowns could lie in wait
+  For such a foe as this!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+Few get enough, -- enough is one;
+  To that ethereal throng
+Have not each one of us the right
+  To stealthily belong?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
+  Too sullied for the hell
+To which the law entitled him.
+  As nature's curtain fell
+The one who bore him tottered in,
+  For this was woman's son.
+''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped;
+  Oh, what a livid boon!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+THE LOST THOUGHT.
+
+I felt a clearing in my mind
+  As if my brain had split;
+I tried to match it, seam by seam,
+  But could not make them fit.
+
+The thought behind I strove to join
+  Unto the thought before,
+But sequence ravelled out of reach
+  Like balls upon a floor.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+RETICENCE.
+
+The reticent volcano keeps
+  His never slumbering plan;
+Confided are his projects pink
+  To no precarious man.
+
+If nature will not tell the tale
+  Jehovah told to her,
+Can human nature not survive
+  Without a listener?
+
+Admonished by her buckled lips
+  Let every babbler be.
+The only secret people keep
+  Is Immortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+WITH FLOWERS.
+
+If recollecting were forgetting,
+  Then I remember not;
+And if forgetting, recollecting,
+  How near I had forgot!
+And if to miss were merry,
+  And if to mourn were gay,
+How very blithe the fingers
+  That gathered these to-day!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+The farthest thunder that I heard
+  Was nearer than the sky,
+And rumbles still, though torrid noons
+  Have lain their missiles by.
+The lightning that preceded it
+  Struck no one but myself,
+But I would not exchange the bolt
+  For all the rest of life.
+Indebtedness to oxygen
+  The chemist may repay,
+But not the obligation
+  To electricity.
+It founds the homes and decks the days,
+  And every clamor bright
+Is but the gleam concomitant
+  Of that waylaying light.
+The thought is quiet as a flake, --
+  A crash without a sound;
+How life's reverberation
+  Its explanation found!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+On the bleakness of my lot
+  Bloom I strove to raise.
+Late, my acre of a rock
+  Yielded grape and maize.
+
+Soil of flint if steadfast tilled
+  Will reward the hand;
+Seed of palm by Lybian sun
+  Fructified in sand.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+CONTRAST.
+
+A door just opened on a street --
+  I, lost, was passing by --
+An instant's width of warmth disclosed,
+  And wealth, and company.
+
+The door as sudden shut, and I,
+  I, lost, was passing by, --
+Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
+  Enlightening misery.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+FRIENDS.
+
+Are friends delight or pain?
+  Could bounty but remain
+Riches were good.
+
+But if they only stay
+Bolder to fly away,
+  Riches are sad.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+FIRE.
+
+Ashes denote that fire was;
+  Respect the grayest pile
+For the departed creature's sake
+  That hovered there awhile.
+
+Fire exists the first in light,
+  And then consolidates, --
+Only the chemist can disclose
+  Into what carbonates.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+A MAN.
+
+Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
+  She felled -- he did not fall --
+Impaled him on her fiercest stakes --
+  He neutralized them all.
+
+She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
+  But, when her worst was done,
+And he, unmoved, regarded her,
+  Acknowledged him a man.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+VENTURES.
+
+Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
+  For the one ship that struts the shore
+Many's the gallant, overwhelmed creature
+  Nodding in navies nevermore.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+GRIEFS.
+
+I measure every grief I meet
+  With analytic eyes;
+I wonder if it weighs like mine,
+  Or has an easier size.
+
+I wonder if they bore it long,
+  Or did it just begin?
+I could not tell the date of mine,
+  It feels so old a pain.
+
+I wonder if it hurts to live,
+  And if they have to try,
+And whether, could they choose between,
+  They would not rather die.
+
+I wonder if when years have piled --
+  Some thousands -- on the cause
+Of early hurt, if such a lapse
+  Could give them any pause;
+
+Or would they go on aching still
+  Through centuries above,
+Enlightened to a larger pain
+  By contrast with the love.
+
+The grieved are many, I am told;
+  The reason deeper lies, --
+Death is but one and comes but once,
+  And only nails the eyes.
+
+There's grief of want, and grief of cold, --
+  A sort they call 'despair;'
+There's banishment from native eyes,
+  In sight of native air.
+
+And though I may not guess the kind
+  Correctly, yet to me
+A piercing comfort it affords
+  In passing Calvary,
+
+To note the fashions of the cross,
+  Of those that stand alone,
+Still fascinated to presume
+  That some are like my own.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+I have a king who does not speak;
+So, wondering, thro' the hours meek
+  I trudge the day away,--
+Half glad when it is night and sleep,
+If, haply, thro' a dream to peep
+  In parlors shut by day.
+
+And if I do, when morning comes,
+It is as if a hundred drums
+  Did round my pillow roll,
+And shouts fill all my childish sky,
+And bells keep saying 'victory'
+  From steeples in my soul!
+
+And if I don't, the little Bird
+Within the Orchard is not heard,
+  And I omit to pray,
+'Father, thy will be done' to-day,
+For my will goes the other way,
+  And it were perjury!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+DISENCHANTMENT.
+
+It dropped so low in my regard
+  I heard it hit the ground,
+And go to pieces on the stones
+  At bottom of my mind;
+
+Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less
+  Than I reviled myself
+For entertaining plated wares
+  Upon my silver shelf.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+LOST FAITH.
+
+To lose one's faith surpasses
+  The loss of an estate,
+Because estates can be
+  Replenished, -- faith cannot.
+
+Inherited with life,
+  Belief but once can be;
+Annihilate a single clause,
+  And Being's beggary.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+LOST JOY.
+
+I had a daily bliss
+  I half indifferent viewed,
+Till sudden I perceived it stir, --
+  It grew as I pursued,
+
+Till when, around a crag,
+  It wasted from my sight,
+Enlarged beyond my utmost scope,
+  I learned its sweetness right.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+I worked for chaff, and earning wheat
+  Was haughty and betrayed.
+What right had fields to arbitrate
+  In matters ratified?
+
+I tasted wheat, -- and hated chaff,
+  And thanked the ample friend;
+Wisdom is more becoming viewed
+  At distance than at hand.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+Life, and Death, and Giants
+  Such as these, are still.
+Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill,
+Beetle at the candle,
+  Or a fife's small fame,
+Maintain by accident
+  That they proclaim.
+
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+ALPINE GLOW.
+
+Our lives are Swiss, --
+  So still, so cool,
+  Till, some odd afternoon,
+The Alps neglect their curtains,
+  And we look farther on.
+
+Italy stands the other side,
+  While, like a guard between,
+The solemn Alps,
+The siren Alps,
+  Forever intervene!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+REMEMBRANCE.
+
+Remembrance has a rear and front, --
+  'T is something like a house;
+It has a garret also
+  For refuse and the mouse,
+
+Besides, the deepest cellar
+  That ever mason hewed;
+Look to it, by its fathoms
+  Ourselves be not pursued.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+To hang our head ostensibly,
+  And subsequent to find
+That such was not the posture
+  Of our immortal mind,
+
+Affords the sly presumption
+  That, in so dense a fuzz,
+You, too, take cobweb attitudes
+  Upon a plane of gauze!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+THE BRAIN.
+
+The brain is wider than the sky,
+  For, put them side by side,
+The one the other will include
+  With ease, and you beside.
+
+The brain is deeper than the sea,
+  For, hold them, blue to blue,
+The one the other will absorb,
+  As sponges, buckets do.
+
+The brain is just the weight of God,
+  For, lift them, pound for pound,
+And they will differ, if they do,
+  As syllable from sound.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+The bone that has no marrow;
+  What ultimate for that?
+It is not fit for table,
+  For beggar, or for cat.
+
+A bone has obligations,
+  A being has the same;
+A marrowless assembly
+  Is culpabler than shame.
+
+But how shall finished creatures
+  A function fresh obtain? --
+Old Nicodemus' phantom
+  Confronting us again!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+THE PAST.
+
+The past is such a curious creature,
+  To look her in the face
+A transport may reward us,
+  Or a disgrace.
+
+Unarmed if any meet her,
+  I charge him, fly!
+Her rusty ammunition
+  Might yet reply!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+To help our bleaker parts
+  Salubrious hours are given,
+Which if they do not fit for earth
+  Drill silently for heaven.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+What soft, cherubic creatures
+  These gentlewomen are!
+One would as soon assault a plush
+  Or violate a star.
+
+Such dimity convictions,
+  A horror so refined
+Of freckled human nature,
+  Of Deity ashamed, --
+
+It's such a common glory,
+  A fisherman's degree!
+Redemption, brittle lady,
+  Be so, ashamed of thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+DESIRE.
+
+Who never wanted, -- maddest joy
+  Remains to him unknown:
+The banquet of abstemiousness
+  Surpasses that of wine.
+
+Within its hope, though yet ungrasped
+  Desire's perfect goal,
+No nearer, lest reality
+  Should disenthrall thy soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+PHILOSOPHY.
+
+It might be easier
+  To fail with land in sight,
+Than gain my blue peninsula
+  To perish of delight.
+
+
+
+
+
+L.
+
+POWER.
+
+You cannot put a fire out;
+  A thing that can ignite
+Can go, itself, without a fan
+  Upon the slowest night.
+
+You cannot fold a flood
+  And put it in a drawer, --
+Because the winds would find it out,
+  And tell your cedar floor.
+
+
+
+
+
+LI.
+
+A modest lot, a fame petite,
+  A brief campaign of sting and sweet
+  Is plenty! Is enough!
+A sailor's business is the shore,
+  A soldier's -- balls. Who asketh more
+Must seek the neighboring life!
+
+
+
+
+
+LII.
+
+Is bliss, then, such abyss
+I must not put my foot amiss
+For fear I spoil my shoe?
+
+I'd rather suit my foot
+Than save my boot,
+For yet to buy another pair
+Is possible
+At any fair.
+
+But bliss is sold just once;
+The patent lost
+None buy it any more.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+EXPERIENCE.
+
+I stepped from plank to plank
+  So slow and cautiously;
+The stars about my head I felt,
+  About my feet the sea.
+
+I knew not but the next
+  Would be my final inch, --
+This gave me that precarious gait
+  Some call experience.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIV.
+
+THANKSGIVING DAY.
+
+One day is there of the series
+  Termed Thanksgiving day,
+Celebrated part at table,
+  Part in memory.
+
+Neither patriarch nor pussy,
+  I dissect the play;
+Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
+  Reflex holiday.
+
+Had there been no sharp subtraction
+  From the early sum,
+Not an acre or a caption
+  Where was once a room,
+
+Not a mention, whose small pebble
+  Wrinkled any bay, --
+Unto such, were such assembly,
+  'T were Thanksgiving day.
+
+
+
+
+
+LV.
+
+CHILDISH GRIEFS.
+
+Softened by Time's consummate plush,
+  How sleek the woe appears
+That threatened childhood's citadel
+  And undermined the years!
+
+Bisected now by bleaker griefs,
+  We envy the despair
+That devastated childhood's realm,
+  So easy to repair.
+
+
+
+
+
+II. LOVE.
+
+
+I.
+
+CONSECRATION.
+
+Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,
+  Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,
+Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,
+  Not to partake thy passion, my humility.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+LOVE'S HUMILITY.
+
+My worthiness is all my doubt,
+  His merit all my fear,
+Contrasting which, my qualities
+  Do lowlier appear;
+
+Lest I should insufficient prove
+  For his beloved need,
+The chiefest apprehension
+  Within my loving creed.
+
+So I, the undivine abode
+  Of his elect content,
+Conform my soul as 't were a church
+  Unto her sacrament.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+LOVE.
+
+Love is anterior to life,
+  Posterior to death,
+Initial of creation, and
+  The exponent of breath.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+SATISFIED.
+
+One blessing had I, than the rest
+  So larger to my eyes
+That I stopped gauging, satisfied,
+  For this enchanted size.
+
+It was the limit of my dream,
+  The focus of my prayer, --
+A perfect, paralyzing bliss
+  Contented as despair.
+
+I knew no more of want or cold,
+  Phantasms both become,
+For this new value in the soul,
+  Supremest earthly sum.
+
+The heaven below the heaven above
+  Obscured with ruddier hue.
+Life's latitude leant over-full;
+  The judgment perished, too.
+
+Why joys so scantily disburse,
+  Why Paradise defer,
+Why floods are served to us in bowls, --
+  I speculate no more.
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+WITH A FLOWER.
+
+When roses cease to bloom, dear,
+  And violets are done,
+When bumble-bees in solemn flight
+  Have passed beyond the sun,
+
+The hand that paused to gather
+  Upon this summer's day
+Will idle lie, in Auburn, --
+  Then take my flower, pray!
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+SONG.
+
+Summer for thee grant I may be
+  When summer days are flown!
+Thy music still when whippoorwill
+  And oriole are done!
+
+For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb
+  And sow my blossoms o'er!
+Pray gather me, Anemone,
+  Thy flower forevermore!
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+LOYALTY.
+
+Split the lark and you'll find the music,
+  Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled,
+Scantily dealt to the summer morning,
+  Saved for your ear when lutes be old.
+
+Loose the flood, you shall find it patent,
+  Gush after gush, reserved for you;
+Scarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas,
+  Now, do you doubt that your bird was true?
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+To lose thee, sweeter than to gain
+  All other hearts I knew.
+'T is true the drought is destitute,
+  But then I had the dew!
+
+The Caspian has its realms of sand,
+  Its other realm of sea;
+Without the sterile perquisite
+  No Caspian could be.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+  Poor little heart!
+  Did they forget thee?
+Then dinna care! Then dinna care!
+
+  Proud little heart!
+  Did they forsake thee?
+Be debonair! Be debonair!
+
+  Frail little heart!
+  I would not break thee:
+Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me?
+
+  Gay little heart!
+  Like morning glory
+Thou'll wilted be; thou'll wilted be!
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+FORGOTTEN.
+
+There is a word
+  Which bears a sword
+  Can pierce an armed man.
+It hurls its barbed syllables,--
+  At once is mute again.
+But where it fell
+The saved will tell
+  On patriotic day,
+Some epauletted brother
+  Gave his breath away.
+
+Wherever runs the breathless sun,
+  Wherever roams the day,
+There is its noiseless onset,
+  There is its victory!
+
+Behold the keenest marksman!
+  The most accomplished shot!
+Time's sublimest target
+  Is a soul 'forgot'!
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+I've got an arrow here;
+  Loving the hand that sent it,
+I the dart revere.
+
+Fell, they will say, in 'skirmish'!
+  Vanquished, my soul will know,
+By but a simple arrow
+  Sped by an archer's bow.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+THE MASTER.
+
+He fumbles at your spirit
+  As players at the keys
+Before they drop full music on;
+  He stuns you by degrees,
+
+Prepares your brittle substance
+  For the ethereal blow,
+By fainter hammers, further heard,
+  Then nearer, then so slow
+
+Your breath has time to straighten,
+  Your brain to bubble cool, --
+Deals one imperial thunderbolt
+  That scalps your naked soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+Heart, we will forget him!
+  You and I, to-night!
+You may forget the warmth he gave,
+  I will forget the light.
+
+When you have done, pray tell me,
+  That I my thoughts may dim;
+Haste! lest while you're lagging,
+  I may remember him!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Father, I bring thee not myself, --
+  That were the little load;
+I bring thee the imperial heart
+  I had not strength to hold.
+
+The heart I cherished in my own
+  Till mine too heavy grew,
+Yet strangest, heavier since it went,
+  Is it too large for you?
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+We outgrow love like other things
+  And put it in the drawer,
+Till it an antique fashion shows
+  Like costumes grandsires wore.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Not with a club the heart is broken,
+    Nor with a stone;
+A whip, so small you could not see it.
+    I've known
+
+To lash the magic creature
+    Till it fell,
+Yet that whip's name too noble
+    Then to tell.
+
+Magnanimous of bird
+    By boy descried,
+To sing unto the stone
+    Of which it died.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+WHO?
+
+My friend must be a bird,
+    Because it flies!
+Mortal my friend must be,
+    Because it dies!
+Barbs has it, like a bee.
+Ah, curious friend,
+    Thou puzzlest me!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+He touched me, so I live to know
+That such a day, permitted so,
+  I groped upon his breast.
+It was a boundless place to me,
+And silenced, as the awful sea
+  Puts minor streams to rest.
+
+And now, I'm different from before,
+As if I breathed superior air,
+  Or brushed a royal gown;
+My feet, too, that had wandered so,
+My gypsy face transfigured now
+  To tenderer renown.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+DREAMS.
+
+Let me not mar that perfect dream
+  By an auroral stain,
+But so adjust my daily night
+  That it will come again.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+NUMEN LUMEN.
+
+I live with him, I see his face;
+  I go no more away
+For visitor, or sundown;
+  Death's single privacy,
+
+The only one forestalling mine,
+  And that by right that he
+Presents a claim invisible,
+  No wedlock granted me.
+
+I live with him, I hear his voice,
+  I stand alive to-day
+To witness to the certainty
+  Of immortality
+
+Taught me by Time, -- the lower way,
+  Conviction every day, --
+That life like this is endless,
+  Be judgment what it may.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+LONGING.
+
+I envy seas whereon he rides,
+  I envy spokes of wheels
+Of chariots that him convey,
+  I envy speechless hills
+
+That gaze upon his journey;
+  How easy all can see
+What is forbidden utterly
+  As heaven, unto me!
+
+I envy nests of sparrows
+  That dot his distant eaves,
+The wealthy fly upon his pane,
+  The happy, happy leaves
+
+That just abroad his window
+  Have summer's leave to be,
+The earrings of Pizarro
+  Could not obtain for me.
+
+I envy light that wakes him,
+  And bells that boldly ring
+To tell him it is noon abroad, --
+  Myself his noon could bring,
+
+Yet interdict my blossom
+  And abrogate my bee,
+Lest noon in everlasting night
+  Drop Gabriel and me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+WEDDED.
+
+A solemn thing it was, I said,
+  A woman white to be,
+And wear, if God should count me fit,
+  Her hallowed mystery.
+
+A timid thing to drop a life
+  Into the purple well,
+Too plummetless that it come back
+  Eternity until.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III. NATURE.
+
+
+I.
+
+NATURE'S CHANGES.
+
+The springtime's pallid landscape
+  Will glow like bright bouquet,
+Though drifted deep in parian
+  The village lies to-day.
+
+The lilacs, bending many a year,
+  With purple load will hang;
+The bees will not forget the tune
+  Their old forefathers sang.
+
+The rose will redden in the bog,
+  The aster on the hill
+Her everlasting fashion set,
+  And covenant gentians frill,
+
+Till summer folds her miracle
+  As women do their gown,
+Or priests adjust the symbols
+  When sacrament is done.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE TULIP.
+
+She slept beneath a tree
+  Remembered but by me.
+I touched her cradle mute;
+She recognized the foot,
+Put on her carmine suit, --
+  And see!
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A light exists in spring
+  Not present on the year
+At any other period.
+  When March is scarcely here
+
+A color stands abroad
+  On solitary hills
+That science cannot overtake,
+  But human nature feels.
+
+It waits upon the lawn;
+  It shows the furthest tree
+Upon the furthest slope we know;
+  It almost speaks to me.
+
+Then, as horizons step,
+  Or noons report away,
+Without the formula of sound,
+  It passes, and we stay:
+
+A quality of loss
+  Affecting our content,
+As trade had suddenly encroached
+  Upon a sacrament.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE WAKING YEAR.
+
+A lady red upon the hill
+  Her annual secret keeps;
+A lady white within the field
+  In placid lily sleeps!
+
+The tidy breezes with their brooms
+  Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!
+Prithee, my pretty housewives!
+  Who may expected be?
+
+The neighbors do not yet suspect!
+  The woods exchange a smile --
+Orchard, and buttercup, and bird --
+  In such a little while!
+
+And yet how still the landscape stands,
+  How nonchalant the wood,
+As if the resurrection
+  Were nothing very odd!
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+TO MARCH.
+
+Dear March, come in!
+How glad I am!
+I looked for you before.
+Put down your hat --
+You must have walked --
+How out of breath you are!
+Dear March, how are you?
+And the rest?
+Did you leave Nature well?
+Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
+I have so much to tell!
+
+I got your letter, and the birds';
+The maples never knew
+That you were coming, -- I declare,
+How red their faces grew!
+But, March, forgive me --
+And all those hills
+You left for me to hue;
+There was no purple suitable,
+You took it all with you.
+
+Who knocks? That April!
+Lock the door!
+I will not be pursued!
+He stayed away a year, to call
+When I am occupied.
+But trifles look so trivial
+As soon as you have come,
+That blame is just as dear as praise
+And praise as mere as blame.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+MARCH.
+
+We like March, his shoes are purple,
+  He is new and high;
+Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
+  Makes he forest dry;
+Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
+  And begets her spot.
+Stands the sun so close and mighty
+  That our minds are hot.
+News is he of all the others;
+  Bold it were to die
+With the blue-birds buccaneering
+  On his British sky.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+DAWN.
+
+Not knowing when the dawn will come
+  I open every door;
+Or has it feathers like a bird,
+  Or billows like a shore?
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+A murmur in the trees to note,
+  Not loud enough for wind;
+A star not far enough to seek,
+  Nor near enough to find;
+
+A long, long yellow on the lawn,
+  A hubbub as of feet;
+Not audible, as ours to us,
+  But dapperer, more sweet;
+
+A hurrying home of little men
+  To houses unperceived, --
+All this, and more, if I should tell,
+  Would never be believed.
+
+Of robins in the trundle bed
+  How many I espy
+Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings,
+  Although I heard them try!
+
+But then I promised ne'er to tell;
+  How could I break my word?
+So go your way and I'll go mine, --
+  No fear you'll miss the road.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Morning is the place for dew,
+  Corn is made at noon,
+After dinner light for flowers,
+  Dukes for setting sun!
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
+  The bushes they were bells;
+I could not find a privacy
+  From Nature's sentinels.
+
+In cave if I presumed to hide,
+  The walls began to tell;
+Creation seemed a mighty crack
+  To make me visible.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+A ROSE.
+
+A sepal, petal, and a thorn
+  Upon a common summer's morn,
+A flash of dew, a bee or two,
+A breeze
+A caper in the trees, --
+  And I'm a rose!
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+High from the earth I heard a bird;
+  He trod upon the trees
+As he esteemed them trifles,
+  And then he spied a breeze,
+And situated softly
+  Upon a pile of wind
+Which in a perturbation
+  Nature had left behind.
+A joyous-going fellow
+  I gathered from his talk,
+Which both of benediction
+  And badinage partook,
+Without apparent burden,
+  I learned, in leafy wood
+He was the faithful father
+  Of a dependent brood;
+And this untoward transport
+  His remedy for care, --
+A contrast to our respites.
+  How different we are!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+COBWEBS.
+
+The spider as an artist
+  Has never been employed
+Though his surpassing merit
+  Is freely certified
+
+By every broom and Bridget
+  Throughout a Christian land.
+Neglected son of genius,
+  I take thee by the hand.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+A WELL.
+
+What mystery pervades a well!
+  The water lives so far,
+Like neighbor from another world
+  Residing in a jar.
+
+The grass does not appear afraid;
+  I often wonder he
+Can stand so close and look so bold
+  At what is dread to me.
+
+Related somehow they may be, --
+  The sedge stands next the sea,
+Where he is floorless, yet of fear
+  No evidence gives he.
+
+But nature is a stranger yet;
+  The ones that cite her most
+Have never passed her haunted house,
+  Nor simplified her ghost.
+
+To pity those that know her not
+  Is helped by the regret
+That those who know her, know her less
+  The nearer her they get.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --
+One clover, and a bee,
+And revery.
+The revery alone will do
+If bees are few.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+THE WIND.
+
+It's like the light, --
+  A fashionless delight
+It's like the bee, --
+  A dateless melody.
+
+It's like the woods,
+  Private like breeze,
+Phraseless, yet it stirs
+  The proudest trees.
+
+It's like the morning, --
+  Best when it's done, --
+The everlasting clocks
+  Chime noon.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+A dew sufficed itself
+  And satisfied a leaf,
+And felt, 'how vast a destiny!
+  How trivial is life!'
+
+The sun went out to work,
+  The day went out to play,
+But not again that dew was seen
+  By physiognomy.
+
+Whether by day abducted,
+  Or emptied by the sun
+Into the sea, in passing,
+  Eternally unknown.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE WOODPECKER.
+
+His bill an auger is,
+  His head, a cap and frill.
+He laboreth at every tree, --
+  A worm his utmost goal.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+A SNAKE.
+
+Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
+  Until we meet a snake;
+'T is then we sigh for houses,
+  And our departure take
+At that enthralling gallop
+  That only childhood knows.
+A snake is summer's treason,
+  And guile is where it goes.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+Could I but ride indefinite,
+  As doth the meadow-bee,
+And visit only where I liked,
+  And no man visit me,
+
+And flirt all day with buttercups,
+  And marry whom I may,
+And dwell a little everywhere,
+  Or better, run away
+
+With no police to follow,
+  Or chase me if I do,
+Till I should jump peninsulas
+  To get away from you, --
+
+I said, but just to be a bee
+  Upon a raft of air,
+And row in nowhere all day long,
+  And anchor off the bar,--
+What liberty! So captives deem
+  Who tight in dungeons are.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+THE MOON.
+
+The moon was but a chin of gold
+  A night or two ago,
+And now she turns her perfect face
+  Upon the world below.
+
+Her forehead is of amplest blond;
+  Her cheek like beryl stone;
+Her eye unto the summer dew
+  The likest I have known.
+
+Her lips of amber never part;
+  But what must be the smile
+Upon her friend she could bestow
+  Were such her silver will!
+
+And what a privilege to be
+  But the remotest star!
+For certainly her way might pass
+  Beside your twinkling door.
+
+Her bonnet is the firmament,
+  The universe her shoe,
+The stars the trinkets at her belt,
+  Her dimities of blue.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+THE BAT.
+
+The bat is dun with wrinkled wings
+  Like fallow article,
+And not a song pervades his lips,
+  Or none perceptible.
+
+His small umbrella, quaintly halved,
+  Describing in the air
+An arc alike inscrutable, --
+  Elate philosopher!
+
+Deputed from what firmament
+  Of what astute abode,
+Empowered with what malevolence
+  Auspiciously withheld.
+
+To his adroit Creator
+  Ascribe no less the praise;
+Beneficent, believe me,
+  His eccentricities.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+THE BALLOON.
+
+You've seen balloons set, haven't you?
+  So stately they ascend
+It is as swans discarded you
+  For duties diamond.
+
+Their liquid feet go softly out
+  Upon a sea of blond;
+They spurn the air as 't were too mean
+  For creatures so renowned.
+
+Their ribbons just beyond the eye,
+  They struggle some for breath,
+And yet the crowd applauds below;
+  They would not encore death.
+
+The gilded creature strains and spins,
+  Trips frantic in a tree,
+Tears open her imperial veins
+  And tumbles in the sea.
+
+The crowd retire with an oath
+  The dust in streets goes down,
+And clerks in counting-rooms observe,
+  ''T was only a balloon.'
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+EVENING.
+
+The cricket sang,
+And set the sun,
+And workmen finished, one by one,
+  Their seam the day upon.
+
+The low grass loaded with the dew,
+The twilight stood as strangers do
+With hat in hand, polite and new,
+  To stay as if, or go.
+
+A vastness, as a neighbor, came, --
+A wisdom without face or name,
+A peace, as hemispheres at home, --
+  And so the night became.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+COCOON.
+
+Drab habitation of whom?
+Tabernacle or tomb,
+Or dome of worm,
+Or porch of gnome,
+Or some elf's catacomb?
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+SUNSET.
+
+A sloop of amber slips away
+  Upon an ether sea,
+And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
+  The son of ecstasy.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+AURORA.
+
+Of bronze and blaze
+  The north, to-night!
+  So adequate its forms,
+So preconcerted with itself,
+  So distant to alarms, --
+An unconcern so sovereign
+  To universe, or me,
+It paints my simple spirit
+  With tints of majesty,
+Till I take vaster attitudes,
+  And strut upon my stem,
+Disdaining men and oxygen,
+  For arrogance of them.
+
+My splendors are menagerie;
+  But their competeless show
+Will entertain the centuries
+  When I am, long ago,
+An island in dishonored grass,
+  Whom none but daisies know.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+THE COMING OF NIGHT.
+
+How the old mountains drip with sunset,
+  And the brake of dun!
+How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
+  By the wizard sun!
+
+How the old steeples hand the scarlet,
+  Till the ball is full, --
+Have I the lip of the flamingo
+  That I dare to tell?
+
+Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,
+  Touching all the grass
+With a departing, sapphire feature,
+  As if a duchess pass!
+
+How a small dusk crawls on the village
+  Till the houses blot;
+And the odd flambeaux no men carry
+  Glimmer on the spot!
+
+Now it is night in nest and kennel,
+  And where was the wood,
+Just a dome of abyss is nodding
+  Into solitude! --
+
+These are the visions baffled Guido;
+  Titian never told;
+Domenichino dropped the pencil,
+  Powerless to unfold.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+AFTERMATH.
+
+The murmuring of bees has ceased;
+  But murmuring of some
+Posterior, prophetic,
+  Has simultaneous come, --
+
+The lower metres of the year,
+  When nature's laugh is done, --
+The Revelations of the book
+  Whose Genesis is June.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.
+
+I.
+
+This world is not conclusion;
+  A sequel stands beyond,
+Invisible, as music,
+  But positive, as sound.
+It beckons and it baffles;
+  Philosophies don't know,
+And through a riddle, at the last,
+  Sagacity must go.
+To guess it puzzles scholars;
+  To gain it, men have shown
+Contempt of generations,
+  And crucifixion known.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+We learn in the retreating
+  How vast an one
+Was recently among us.
+  A perished sun
+
+Endears in the departure
+  How doubly more
+Than all the golden presence
+  It was before!
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+They say that 'time assuages,' --
+  Time never did assuage;
+An actual suffering strengthens,
+  As sinews do, with age.
+
+Time is a test of trouble,
+  But not a remedy.
+If such it prove, it prove too
+  There was no malady.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+We cover thee, sweet face.
+  Not that we tire of thee,
+But that thyself fatigue of us;
+  Remember, as thou flee,
+We follow thee until
+  Thou notice us no more,
+And then, reluctant, turn away
+  To con thee o'er and o'er,
+And blame the scanty love
+  We were content to show,
+Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold
+  If thou would'st take it now.
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+ENDING.
+
+That is solemn we have ended, --
+  Be it but a play,
+Or a glee among the garrets,
+  Or a holiday,
+
+Or a leaving home; or later,
+  Parting with a world
+We have understood, for better
+  Still it be unfurled.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+The stimulus, beyond the grave
+  His countenance to see,
+Supports me like imperial drams
+  Afforded royally.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Given in marriage unto thee,
+  Oh, thou celestial host!
+Bride of the Father and the Son,
+  Bride of the Holy Ghost!
+
+Other betrothal shall dissolve,
+  Wedlock of will decay;
+Only the keeper of this seal
+  Conquers mortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+That such have died enables us
+  The tranquiller to die;
+That such have lived, certificate
+  For immortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+They won't frown always, -- some sweet day
+  When I forget to tease,
+They'll recollect how cold I looked,
+  And how I just said 'please.'
+
+Then they will hasten to the door
+  To call the little child,
+Who cannot thank them, for the ice
+  That on her lisping piled.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+IMMORTALITY.
+
+It is an honorable thought,
+  And makes one lift one's hat,
+As one encountered gentlefolk
+  Upon a daily street,
+
+That we've immortal place,
+  Though pyramids decay,
+And kingdoms, like the orchard,
+  Flit russetly away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+The distance that the dead have gone
+  Does not at first appear;
+Their coming back seems possible
+  For many an ardent year.
+
+And then, that we have followed them
+  We more than half suspect,
+So intimate have we become
+  With their dear retrospect.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+How dare the robins sing,
+  When men and women hear
+Who since they went to their account
+  Have settled with the year! --
+Paid all that life had earned
+  In one consummate bill,
+And now, what life or death can do
+  Is immaterial.
+Insulting is the sun
+  To him whose mortal light,
+Beguiled of immortality,
+  Bequeaths him to the night.
+In deference to him
+  Extinct be every hum,
+Whose garden wrestles with the dew,
+  At daybreak overcome!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+DEATH.
+
+Death is like the insect
+  Menacing the tree,
+Competent to kill it,
+  But decoyed may be.
+
+Bait it with the balsam,
+  Seek it with the knife,
+Baffle, if it cost you
+  Everything in life.
+
+Then, if it have burrowed
+  Out of reach of skill,
+Ring the tree and leave it, --
+  'T is the vermin's will.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+UNWARNED.
+
+'T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou
+  No station in the day?
+'T was not thy wont to hinder so, --
+  Retrieve thine industry.
+
+'T is noon, my little maid, alas!
+  And art thou sleeping yet?
+The lily waiting to be wed,
+  The bee, dost thou forget?
+
+My little maid, 't is night; alas,
+  That night should be to thee
+Instead of morning! Hadst thou broached
+  Thy little plan to me,
+Dissuade thee if I could not, sweet,
+  I might have aided thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+Each that we lose takes part of us;
+  A crescent still abides,
+Which like the moon, some turbid night,
+  Is summoned by the tides.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Not any higher stands the grave
+  For heroes than for men;
+Not any nearer for the child
+  Than numb three-score and ten.
+
+This latest leisure equal lulls
+  The beggar and his queen;
+Propitiate this democrat
+  By summer's gracious mien.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+ASLEEP.
+
+As far from pity as complaint,
+  As cool to speech as stone,
+As numb to revelation
+  As if my trade were bone.
+
+As far from time as history,
+  As near yourself to-day
+As children to the rainbow's scarf,
+  Or sunset's yellow play
+
+To eyelids in the sepulchre.
+  How still the dancer lies,
+While color's revelations break,
+  And blaze the butterflies!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE SPIRIT.
+
+'T is whiter than an Indian pipe,
+  'T is dimmer than a lace;
+No stature has it, like a fog,
+  When you approach the place.
+
+Not any voice denotes it here,
+  Or intimates it there;
+A spirit, how doth it accost?
+  What customs hath the air?
+
+This limitless hyperbole
+  Each one of us shall be;
+'T is drama, if (hypothesis)
+  It be not tragedy!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+THE MONUMENT.
+
+She laid her docile crescent down,
+  And this mechanic stone
+Still states, to dates that have forgot,
+  The news that she is gone.
+
+So constant to its stolid trust,
+  The shaft that never knew,
+It shames the constancy that fled
+  Before its emblem flew.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+Bless God, he went as soldiers,
+  His musket on his breast;
+Grant, God, he charge the bravest
+  Of all the martial blest.
+
+Please God, might I behold him
+  In epauletted white,
+I should not fear the foe then,
+  I should not fear the fight.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+Immortal is an ample word
+  When what we need is by,
+But when it leaves us for a time,
+  'T is a necessity.
+
+Of heaven above the firmest proof
+  We fundamental know,
+Except for its marauding hand,
+  It had been heaven below.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+Where every bird is bold to go,
+  And bees abashless play,
+The foreigner before he knocks
+  Must thrust the tears away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+The grave my little cottage is,
+  Where, keeping house for thee,
+I make my parlor orderly,
+  And lay the marble tea,
+
+For two divided, briefly,
+  A cycle, it may be,
+Till everlasting life unite
+  In strong society.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+This was in the white of the year,
+  That was in the green,
+Drifts were as difficult then to think
+  As daisies now to be seen.
+
+Looking back is best that is left,
+  Or if it be before,
+Retrospection is prospect's half,
+  Sometimes almost more.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+Sweet hours have perished here;
+  This is a mighty room;
+Within its precincts hopes have played, --
+  Now shadows in the tomb.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+Me! Come! My dazzled face
+In such a shining place!
+
+Me! Hear! My foreign ear
+The sounds of welcome near!
+
+The saints shall meet
+Our bashful feet.
+
+My holiday shall be
+That they remember me;
+
+My paradise, the fame
+That they pronounce my name.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+INVISIBLE.
+
+From us she wandered now a year,
+  Her tarrying unknown;
+If wilderness prevent her feet,
+  Or that ethereal zone
+
+No eye hath seen and lived,
+  We ignorant must be.
+We only know what time of year
+  We took the mystery.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+I wish I knew that woman's name,
+  So, when she comes this way,
+To hold my life, and hold my ears,
+  For fear I hear her say
+
+She's 'sorry I am dead,' again,
+  Just when the grave and I
+Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, --
+  Our only lullaby.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+TRYING TO FORGET.
+
+Bereaved of all, I went abroad,
+  No less bereaved to be
+Upon a new peninsula, --
+  The grave preceded me,
+
+Obtained my lodgings ere myself,
+  And when I sought my bed,
+The grave it was, reposed upon
+  The pillow for my head.
+
+I waked, to find it first awake,
+  I rose, -- it followed me;
+I tried to drop it in the crowd,
+  To lose it in the sea,
+
+In cups of artificial drowse
+  To sleep its shape away, --
+The grave was finished, but the spade
+  Remained in memory.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+I felt a funeral in my brain,
+  And mourners, to and fro,
+Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
+  That sense was breaking through.
+
+And when they all were seated,
+  A service like a drum
+Kept beating, beating, till I thought
+  My mind was going numb.
+
+And then I heard them lift a box,
+  And creak across my soul
+With those same boots of lead, again.
+  Then space began to toll
+
+As all the heavens were a bell,
+  And Being but an ear,
+And I and silence some strange race,
+  Wrecked, solitary, here.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+I meant to find her when I came;
+  Death had the same design;
+But the success was his, it seems,
+  And the discomfit mine.
+
+I meant to tell her how I longed
+  For just this single time;
+But Death had told her so the first,
+  And she had hearkened him.
+
+To wander now is my abode;
+  To rest, -- to rest would be
+A privilege of hurricane
+  To memory and me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+WAITING.
+
+I sing to use the waiting,
+  My bonnet but to tie,
+And shut the door unto my house;
+  No more to do have I,
+
+Till, his best step approaching,
+  We journey to the day,
+And tell each other how we sang
+  To keep the dark away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+A sickness of this world it most occasions
+  When best men die;
+A wishfulness their far condition
+  To occupy.
+
+A chief indifference, as foreign
+  A world must be
+Themselves forsake contented,
+  For Deity.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+Superfluous were the sun
+  When excellence is dead;
+He were superfluous every day,
+  For every day is said
+
+That syllable whose faith
+  Just saves it from despair,
+And whose 'I'll meet you' hesitates
+  If love inquire, 'Where?'
+
+Upon his dateless fame
+  Our periods may lie,
+As stars that drop anonymous
+  From an abundant sky.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+So proud she was to die
+  It made us all ashamed
+That what we cherished, so unknown
+  To her desire seemed.
+
+So satisfied to go
+  Where none of us should be,
+Immediately, that anguish stooped
+  Almost to jealousy.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+FAREWELL.
+
+Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,
+  Then I am ready to go!
+Just a look at the horses --
+  Rapid! That will do!
+
+Put me in on the firmest side,
+  So I shall never fall;
+For we must ride to the Judgment,
+  And it's partly down hill.
+
+But never I mind the bridges,
+  And never I mind the sea;
+Held fast in everlasting race
+  By my own choice and thee.
+
+Good-by to the life I used to live,
+  And the world I used to know;
+And kiss the hills for me, just once;
+  Now I am ready to go!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+The dying need but little, dear, --
+  A glass of water's all,
+A flower's unobtrusive face
+  To punctuate the wall,
+
+A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,
+  And certainly that one
+No color in the rainbow
+  Perceives when you are gone.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+DEAD.
+
+There's something quieter than sleep
+  Within this inner room!
+It wears a sprig upon its breast,
+  And will not tell its name.
+
+Some touch it and some kiss it,
+  Some chafe its idle hand;
+It has a simple gravity
+  I do not understand!
+
+While simple-hearted neighbors
+  Chat of the 'early dead,'
+We, prone to periphrasis,
+  Remark that birds have fled!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+The soul should always stand ajar,
+  That if the heaven inquire,
+He will not be obliged to wait,
+  Or shy of troubling her.
+
+Depart, before the host has slid
+  The bolt upon the door,
+To seek for the accomplished guest, --
+  Her visitor no more.
+
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+Three weeks passed since I had seen her, --
+  Some disease had vexed;
+'T was with text and village singing
+  I beheld her next,
+
+And a company -- our pleasure
+  To discourse alone;
+Gracious now to me as any,
+  Gracious unto none.
+
+Borne, without dissent of either,
+  To the parish night;
+Of the separated people
+  Which are out of sight?
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+I breathed enough to learn the trick,
+  And now, removed from air,
+I simulate the breath so well,
+  That one, to be quite sure
+
+The lungs are stirless, must descend
+  Among the cunning cells,
+And touch the pantomime himself.
+  How cool the bellows feels!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+I wonder if the sepulchre
+  Is not a lonesome way,
+When men and boys, and larks and June
+  Go down the fields to hay!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+JOY IN DEATH.
+
+If tolling bell I ask the cause.
+  'A soul has gone to God,'
+I'm answered in a lonesome tone;
+  Is heaven then so sad?
+
+That bells should joyful ring to tell
+  A soul had gone to heaven,
+Would seem to me the proper way
+  A good news should be given.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+If I may have it when it's dead
+  I will contented be;
+If just as soon as breath is out
+  It shall belong to me,
+
+Until they lock it in the grave,
+  'T is bliss I cannot weigh,
+For though they lock thee in the grave,
+  Myself can hold the key.
+
+Think of it, lover! I and thee
+  Permitted face to face to be;
+After a life, a death we'll say, --
+  For death was that, and this is thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+Before the ice is in the pools,
+  Before the skaters go,
+Or any cheek at nightfall
+  Is tarnished by the snow,
+
+Before the fields have finished,
+  Before the Christmas tree,
+Wonder upon wonder
+  Will arrive to me!
+
+What we touch the hems of
+  On a summer's day;
+What is only walking
+  Just a bridge away;
+
+That which sings so, speaks so,
+  When there's no one here, --
+Will the frock I wept in
+  Answer me to wear?
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+DYING.
+
+I heard a fly buzz when I died;
+  The stillness round my form
+Was like the stillness in the air
+  Between the heaves of storm.
+
+The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
+  And breaths were gathering sure
+For that last onset, when the king
+  Be witnessed in his power.
+
+I willed my keepsakes, signed away
+  What portion of me I
+Could make assignable, -- and then
+  There interposed a fly,
+
+With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
+  Between the light and me;
+And then the windows failed, and then
+  I could not see to see.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+Adrift! A little boat adrift!
+  And night is coming down!
+Will no one guide a little boat
+  Unto the nearest town?
+
+So sailors say, on yesterday,
+  Just as the dusk was brown,
+One little boat gave up its strife,
+  And gurgled down and down.
+
+But angels say, on yesterday,
+  Just as the dawn was red,
+One little boat o'erspent with gales
+Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
+  Exultant, onward sped!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+There's been a death in the opposite house
+  As lately as to-day.
+I know it by the numb look
+  Such houses have alway.
+
+The neighbors rustle in and out,
+  The doctor drives away.
+A window opens like a pod,
+  Abrupt, mechanically;
+
+Somebody flings a mattress out, --
+  The children hurry by;
+They wonder if It died on that, --
+  I used to when a boy.
+
+The minister goes stiffly in
+  As if the house were his,
+And he owned all the mourners now,
+  And little boys besides;
+
+And then the milliner, and the man
+  Of the appalling trade,
+To take the measure of the house.
+  There'll be that dark parade
+
+Of tassels and of coaches soon;
+  It's easy as a sign, --
+The intuition of the news
+  In just a country town.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+We never know we go, -- when we are going
+  We jest and shut the door;
+Fate following behind us bolts it,
+  And we accost no more.
+
+
+
+
+L.
+
+THE SOUL'S STORM.
+
+It struck me every day
+  The lightning was as new
+As if the cloud that instant slit
+  And let the fire through.
+
+It burned me in the night,
+  It blistered in my dream;
+It sickened fresh upon my sight
+  With every morning's beam.
+
+I thought that storm was brief, --
+  The maddest, quickest by;
+But Nature lost the date of this,
+  And left it in the sky.
+
+
+
+
+
+LI.
+
+Water is taught by thirst;
+Land, by the oceans passed;
+  Transport, by throe;
+Peace, by its battles told;
+Love, by memorial mould;
+  Birds, by the snow.
+
+
+
+
+LII.
+
+THIRST.
+
+We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act;
+  And later, when we die,
+A little water supplicate
+  Of fingers going by.
+
+It intimates the finer want,
+  Whose adequate supply
+Is that great water in the west
+  Termed immortality.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+A clock stopped -- not the mantel's;
+  Geneva's farthest skill
+Can't put the puppet bowing
+  That just now dangled still.
+
+An awe came on the trinket!
+  The figures hunched with pain,
+Then quivered out of decimals
+  Into degreeless noon.
+
+It will not stir for doctors,
+  This pendulum of snow;
+The shopman importunes it,
+  While cool, concernless No
+
+Nods from the gilded pointers,
+  Nods from the seconds slim,
+Decades of arrogance between
+  The dial life and him.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIV.
+
+CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S GRAVE.
+
+All overgrown by cunning moss,
+  All interspersed with weed,
+The little cage of 'Currer Bell,'
+  In quiet Haworth laid.
+
+This bird, observing others,
+  When frosts too sharp became,
+Retire to other latitudes,
+  Quietly did the same,
+
+But differed in returning;
+  Since Yorkshire hills are green,
+Yet not in all the nests I meet
+  Can nightingale be seen.
+
+Gathered from many wanderings,
+  Gethsemane can tell
+Through what transporting anguish
+  She reached the asphodel!
+
+Soft fall the sounds of Eden
+  Upon her puzzled ear;
+Oh, what an afternoon for heaven,
+  When 'Bronte' entered there!
+
+
+
+
+
+LV.
+
+A toad can die of light!
+Death is the common right
+  Of toads and men, --
+Of earl and midge
+The privilege.
+  Why swagger then?
+The gnat's supremacy
+Is large as thine.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVI.
+
+Far from love the Heavenly Father
+  Leads the chosen child;
+Oftener through realm of briar
+  Than the meadow mild,
+
+Oftener by the claw of dragon
+  Than the hand of friend,
+Guides the little one predestined
+  To the native land.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVII.
+
+SLEEPING.
+
+A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
+  That makes no show for dawn
+By stretch of limb or stir of lid, --
+  An independent one.
+
+Was ever idleness like this?
+  Within a hut of stone
+To bask the centuries away
+  Nor once look up for noon?
+
+
+
+
+
+LVIII.
+
+RETROSPECT.
+
+'T was just this time last year I died.
+  I know I heard the corn,
+When I was carried by the farms, --
+  It had the tassels on.
+
+I thought how yellow it would look
+  When Richard went to mill;
+And then I wanted to get out,
+  But something held my will.
+
+I thought just how red apples wedged
+  The stubble's joints between;
+And carts went stooping round the fields
+  To take the pumpkins in.
+
+I wondered which would miss me least,
+  And when Thanksgiving came,
+If father'd multiply the plates
+  To make an even sum.
+
+And if my stocking hung too high,
+  Would it blur the Christmas glee,
+That not a Santa Claus could reach
+  The altitude of me?
+
+But this sort grieved myself, and so
+  I thought how it would be
+When just this time, some perfect year,
+  Themselves should come to me.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIX.
+
+ETERNITY.
+
+On this wondrous sea,
+Sailing silently,
+  Ho! pilot, ho!
+Knowest thou the shore
+Where no breakers roar,
+  Where the storm is o'er?
+
+In the silent west
+Many sails at rest,
+  Their anchors fast;
+Thither I pilot thee, --
+Land, ho! Eternity!
+  Ashore at last!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems: Third Series, by Emily Dickinson
+
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