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+Project Gutenberg's Poems: Three Series, Complete, 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: Three Series, Complete
+
+Author: Emily Dickinson
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2004 [EBook #12242]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS: THREE SERIES, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox.com>
+
+
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+by EMILY DICKINSON
+
+
+
+
+Edited by two of her friends
+
+MABEL LOOMIS TODD and T.W. HIGGINSON
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson
+long since called "the Poetry of the Portfolio,"--something produced
+absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of
+expression of the writer's own mind. Such verse must inevitably
+forfeit whatever advantage lies in the discipline of public criticism
+and the enforced conformity to accepted ways. On the other hand, it
+may often gain something through the habit of freedom and the
+unconventional utterance of daring thoughts. In the case of the
+present author, there was absolutely no choice in the matter; she
+must write thus, or not at all. A recluse by temperament and habit,
+literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the
+doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly
+limited to her father's grounds, she habitually concealed her mind,
+like her person, from all but a very few friends; and it was with
+great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her
+lifetime, three or four poems.  Yet she wrote verses in great
+abundance; and though brought curiously indifferent to all
+conventional rules, had yet a rigorous literary standard of her own,
+and often altered a word many times to suit an ear which had its own
+tenacious fastidiousness.
+
+Miss Dickinson was born in Amherst, Mass., Dec. 10, 1830, and died
+there May 15, 1886. Her father, Hon. Edward Dickinson, was the
+leading lawyer of Amherst, and was treasurer of the well-known
+college there situated. It was his custom once a year to hold a large
+reception at his house, attended by all the families connected with
+the institution and by the leading people of the town. On these
+occasions his daughter Emily emerged from her wonted retirement and
+did her part as gracious hostess; nor would any one have known from
+her manner, I have been told, that this was not a daily occurrence.
+The annual occasion once past, she withdrew again into her seclusion,
+and except for a very few friends was as invisible to the world as if
+she had dwelt in a nunnery.  For myself, although I had corresponded
+with her for many years, I saw her but twice face to face, and
+brought away the impression of something as unique and remote as
+Undine or Mignon or Thekla.
+
+This selection from her poems is published to meet the desire of her
+personal friends, and especially of her surviving sister. It is
+believed that the thoughtful reader will find in these pages a
+quality more suggestive of the poetry of William Blake than of
+anything to be elsewhere found,--flashes of wholly original and
+profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting
+an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet
+often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame. They are
+here published as they were written, with very few and superficial
+changes; although it is fair to say that the titles have been
+assigned, almost invariably, by the editors. In many cases these
+verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the roots, with
+rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and
+a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed.  In other cases, as in the
+few poems of shipwreck or of mental conflict, we can only wonder at
+the gift of vivid imagination by which this recluse woman can
+delineate, by a few touches, the very crises of physical or mental
+struggle. And sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain,
+sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the
+reader regret its sudden cessation. But the main quality of these
+poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight, uttered with an
+uneven vigor sometimes exasperating, seemingly wayward, but really
+unsought and inevitable.  After all, when a thought takes one's
+breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin
+wrote in his earlier and better days, "No weight nor mass nor beauty
+of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought."
+
+            ---Thomas Wentworth Higginson
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
+
+As is well documented, Emily Dickinson's poems were edited in these
+early editions by her friends, better to fit the conventions of the
+times. In particular, her dashes, often small enough to appear
+as dots, became commas and semi-colons.
+
+In the second series of poems published, a facsimile of her
+handwritten poem which her editors titled "Renunciation" is given,
+and I here transcribe that manuscript as faithfully as I can,
+showing _underlined_ words thus.
+
+
+There came a day - at Summer's full -
+Entirely for me -
+I thought that such were for the Saints -
+Where Resurrections - be -
+
+The sun - as common - went abroad -
+The flowers - accustomed - blew,
+As if no soul - that solstice passed -
+Which maketh all things - new -
+
+The time was scarce profaned - by speech -
+The falling of a word
+Was needless - as at Sacrament -
+The _Wardrobe_ - of our Lord!
+
+Each was to each - the sealed church -
+Permitted to commune -  _this_ time -
+Lest we too awkward show
+At Supper of "the Lamb."
+
+The hours slid fast - as hours will -
+Clutched tight - by greedy hands -
+So - faces on two Decks look back -
+Bound to _opposing_ lands.
+
+And so, when all the time had leaked,
+Without external sound,
+Each bound the other's Crucifix -
+We gave no other bond -
+
+Sufficient troth - that we shall _rise_,
+Deposed - at length the Grave -
+To that new marriage -
+_Justified_ - through Calvaries - of Love!
+
+
+From the handwriting, it is not always clear which are dashes,
+which are commas and which are periods, nor it is entirely
+clear which initial letters are capitalized.
+
+However, this transcription may be compared with the edited
+version in the main text to get a flavor of the changes made
+in these early editions.
+
+      ---JT
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    This is my letter to the world,
+       That never wrote to me, --
+    The simple news that Nature told,
+       With tender majesty.
+
+    Her message is committed
+       To hands I cannot see;
+    For love of her, sweet countrymen,
+       Judge tenderly of me!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I. LIFE.
+
+
+I.
+
+SUCCESS.
+
+[Published in "A Masque of Poets"
+at the request of "H.H.," the author's
+fellow-townswoman and friend.]
+
+Success is counted sweetest
+By those who ne'er succeed.
+To comprehend a nectar
+Requires sorest need.
+
+Not one of all the purple host
+Who took the flag to-day
+Can tell the definition,
+So clear, of victory,
+
+As he, defeated, dying,
+On whose forbidden ear
+The distant strains of triumph
+Break, agonized and clear!
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Our share of night to bear,
+Our share of morning,
+Our blank in bliss to fill,
+Our blank in scorning.
+
+Here a star, and there a star,
+Some lose their way.
+Here a mist, and there a mist,
+Afterwards -- day!
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+ROUGE ET NOIR.
+
+Soul, wilt thou toss again?
+By just such a hazard
+Hundreds have lost, indeed,
+But tens have won an all.
+
+Angels' breathless ballot
+Lingers to record thee;
+Imps in eager caucus
+Raffle for my soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+ROUGE GAGNE.
+
+'T is so much joy! 'T is so much joy!
+If I should fail, what poverty!
+And yet, as poor as I
+Have ventured all upon a throw;
+Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so
+This side the victory!
+
+Life is but life, and death but death!
+Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!
+And if, indeed, I fail,
+At least to know the worst is sweet.
+Defeat means nothing but defeat,
+No drearier can prevail!
+
+And if I gain, -- oh, gun at sea,
+Oh, bells that in the steeples be,
+At first repeat it slow!
+For heaven is a different thing
+Conjectured, and waked sudden in,
+And might o'erwhelm me so!
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Glee! The great storm is over!
+Four have recovered the land;
+Forty gone down together
+Into the boiling sand.
+
+Ring, for the scant salvation!
+Toll, for the bonnie souls, --
+Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
+Spinning upon the shoals!
+
+How they will tell the shipwreck
+When winter shakes the door,
+Till the children ask, "But the forty?
+Did they come back no more?"
+
+Then a silence suffuses the story,
+And a softness the teller's eye;
+And the children no further question,
+And only the waves reply.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+If I can stop one heart from breaking,
+I shall not live in vain;
+If I can ease one life the aching,
+Or cool one pain,
+Or help one fainting robin
+Unto his nest again,
+I shall not live in vain.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+ALMOST!
+
+Within my reach!
+I could have touched!
+I might have chanced that way!
+Soft sauntered through the village,
+Sauntered as soft away!
+So unsuspected violets
+Within the fields lie low,
+Too late for striving fingers
+That passed, an hour ago.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+A wounded deer leaps highest,
+I've heard the hunter tell;
+'T is but the ecstasy of death,
+And then the brake is still.
+
+The smitten rock that gushes,
+The trampled steel that springs;
+A cheek is always redder
+Just where the hectic stings!
+
+Mirth is the mail of anguish,
+In which it cautions arm,
+Lest anybody spy the blood
+And "You're hurt" exclaim!
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+The heart asks pleasure first,
+And then, excuse from pain;
+And then, those little anodynes
+That deaden suffering;
+
+And then, to go to sleep;
+And then, if it should be
+The will of its Inquisitor,
+The liberty to die.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+IN A LIBRARY.
+
+A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
+To meet an antique book,
+In just the dress his century wore;
+A privilege, I think,
+
+His venerable hand to take,
+And warming in our own,
+A passage back, or two, to make
+To times when he was young.
+
+His quaint opinions to inspect,
+His knowledge to unfold
+On what concerns our mutual mind,
+The literature of old;
+
+What interested scholars most,
+What competitions ran
+When Plato was a certainty.
+And Sophocles a man;
+
+When Sappho was a living girl,
+And Beatrice wore
+The gown that Dante deified.
+Facts, centuries before,
+
+He traverses familiar,
+As one should come to town
+And tell you all your dreams were true;
+He lived where dreams were sown.
+
+His presence is enchantment,
+You beg him not to go;
+Old volumes shake their vellum heads
+And tantalize, just so.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+Much madness is divinest sense
+To a discerning eye;
+Much sense the starkest madness.
+'T is the majority
+In this, as all, prevails.
+Assent, and you are sane;
+Demur, -- you're straightway dangerous,
+And handled with a chain.
+XII.
+
+I asked no other thing,
+No other was denied.
+I offered Being for it;
+The mighty merchant smiled.
+
+Brazil? He twirled a button,
+Without a glance my way:
+"But, madam, is there nothing else
+That we can show to-day?"
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+EXCLUSION.
+
+The soul selects her own society,
+Then shuts the door;
+On her divine majority
+Obtrude no more.
+
+Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
+At her low gate;
+Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
+Upon her mat.
+
+I've known her from an ample nation
+Choose one;
+Then close the valves of her attention
+Like stone.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+THE SECRET.
+
+Some things that fly there be, --
+Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:
+Of these no elegy.
+
+Some things that stay there be, --
+Grief, hills, eternity:
+Nor this behooveth me.
+
+There are, that resting, rise.
+Can I expound the skies?
+How still the riddle lies!
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE LONELY HOUSE.
+
+I know some lonely houses off the road
+A robber 'd like the look of, --
+Wooden barred,
+And windows hanging low,
+Inviting to
+A portico,
+Where two could creep:
+One hand the tools,
+The other peep
+To make sure all's asleep.
+Old-fashioned eyes,
+Not easy to surprise!
+
+How orderly the kitchen 'd look by night,
+With just a clock, --
+But they could gag the tick,
+And mice won't bark;
+And so the walls don't tell,
+None will.
+
+A pair of spectacles ajar just stir --
+An almanac's aware.
+Was it the mat winked,
+Or a nervous star?
+The moon slides down the stair
+To see who's there.
+
+There's plunder, -- where?
+Tankard, or spoon,
+Earring, or stone,
+A watch, some ancient brooch
+To match the grandmamma,
+Staid sleeping there.
+
+Day rattles, too,
+Stealth's slow;
+The sun has got as far
+As the third sycamore.
+Screams chanticleer,
+"Who's there?"
+And echoes, trains away,
+Sneer -- "Where?"
+While the old couple, just astir,
+Fancy the sunrise left the door ajar!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+To fight aloud is very brave,
+But gallanter, I know,
+Who charge within the bosom,
+The cavalry of woe.
+
+Who win, and nations do not see,
+Who fall, and none observe,
+Whose dying eyes no country
+Regards with patriot love.
+
+We trust, in plumed procession,
+For such the angels go,
+Rank after rank, with even feet
+And uniforms of snow.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+DAWN.
+
+When night is almost done,
+And sunrise grows so near
+That we can touch the spaces,
+It 's time to smooth the hair
+
+And get the dimples ready,
+And wonder we could care
+For that old faded midnight
+That frightened but an hour.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE BOOK OF MARTYRS.
+
+Read, sweet, how others strove,
+Till we are stouter;
+What they renounced,
+Till we are less afraid;
+How many times they bore
+The faithful witness,
+Till we are helped,
+As if a kingdom cared!
+
+Read then of faith
+That shone above the fagot;
+Clear strains of hymn
+The river could not drown;
+Brave names of men
+And celestial women,
+Passed out of record
+Into renown!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF PAIN.
+
+Pain has an element of blank;
+It cannot recollect
+When it began, or if there were
+A day when it was not.
+
+It has no future but itself,
+Its infinite realms contain
+Its past, enlightened to perceive
+New periods of pain.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+I taste a liquor never brewed,
+From tankards scooped in pearl;
+Not all the vats upon the Rhine
+Yield such an alcohol!
+
+Inebriate of air am I,
+And debauchee of dew,
+Reeling, through endless summer days,
+From inns of molten blue.
+
+When landlords turn the drunken bee
+Out of the foxglove's door,
+When butterflies renounce their drams,
+I shall but drink the more!
+
+Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
+And saints to windows run,
+To see the little tippler
+Leaning against the sun!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+A BOOK.
+
+He ate and drank the precious words,
+His spirit grew robust;
+He knew no more that he was poor,
+Nor that his frame was dust.
+He danced along the dingy days,
+And this bequest of wings
+Was but a book. What liberty
+A loosened spirit brings!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+I had no time to hate, because
+The grave would hinder me,
+And life was not so ample I
+Could finish enmity.
+
+Nor had I time to love; but since
+Some industry must be,
+The little toil of love, I thought,
+Was large enough for me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+UNRETURNING.
+
+'T was such a little, little boat
+That toddled down the bay!
+'T was such a gallant, gallant sea
+That beckoned it away!
+
+'T was such a greedy, greedy wave
+That licked it from the coast;
+Nor ever guessed the stately sails
+My little craft was lost!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+Whether my bark went down at sea,
+Whether she met with gales,
+Whether to isles enchanted
+She bent her docile sails;
+
+By what mystic mooring
+She is held to-day, --
+This is the errand of the eye
+Out upon the bay.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+Belshazzar had a letter, --
+He never had but one;
+Belshazzar's correspondent
+Concluded and begun
+In that immortal copy
+The conscience of us all
+Can read without its glasses
+On revelation's wall.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+The brain within its groove
+Runs evenly and true;
+But let a splinter swerve,
+'T were easier for you
+To put the water back
+When floods have slit the hills,
+And scooped a turnpike for themselves,
+And blotted out the mills!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II. LOVE.
+
+
+I.
+
+MINE.
+
+Mine by the right of the white election!
+Mine by the royal seal!
+Mine by the sign in the scarlet prison
+Bars cannot conceal!
+
+Mine, here in vision and in veto!
+Mine, by the grave's repeal
+Titled, confirmed, -- delirious charter!
+Mine, while the ages steal!
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+BEQUEST.
+
+You left me, sweet, two legacies, --
+A legacy of love
+A Heavenly Father would content,
+Had He the offer of;
+
+You left me boundaries of pain
+Capacious as the sea,
+Between eternity and time,
+Your consciousness and me.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Alter? When the hills do.
+Falter? When the sun
+Question if his glory
+Be the perfect one.
+
+Surfeit? When the daffodil
+Doth of the dew:
+Even as herself, O friend!
+I will of you!
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+SUSPENSE.
+
+Elysium is as far as to
+The very nearest room,
+If in that room a friend await
+Felicity or doom.
+
+What fortitude the soul contains,
+That it can so endure
+The accent of a coming foot,
+The opening of a door!
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+SURRENDER.
+
+Doubt me, my dim companion!
+Why, God would be content
+With but a fraction of the love
+Poured thee without a stint.
+The whole of me, forever,
+What more the woman can, --
+Say quick, that I may dower thee
+With last delight I own!
+
+It cannot be my spirit,
+For that was thine before;
+I ceded all of dust I knew, --
+What opulence the more
+Had I, a humble maiden,
+Whose farthest of degree
+Was that she might,
+Some distant heaven,
+Dwell timidly with thee!
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+If you were coming in the fall,
+I'd brush the summer by
+With half a smile and half a spurn,
+As housewives do a fly.
+
+If I could see you in a year,
+I'd wind the months in balls,
+And put them each in separate drawers,
+Until their time befalls.
+
+If only centuries delayed,
+I'd count them on my hand,
+Subtracting till my fingers dropped
+Into Van Diemen's land.
+
+If certain, when this life was out,
+That yours and mine should be,
+I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
+And taste eternity.
+
+But now, all ignorant of the length
+Of time's uncertain wing,
+It goads me, like the goblin bee,
+That will not state its sting.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+WITH A FLOWER.
+
+I hide myself within my flower,
+That wearing on your breast,
+You, unsuspecting, wear me too --
+And angels know the rest.
+
+I hide myself within my flower,
+That, fading from your vase,
+You, unsuspecting, feel for me
+Almost a loneliness.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+PROOF.
+
+That I did always love,
+I bring thee proof:
+That till I loved
+I did not love enough.
+
+That I shall love alway,
+I offer thee
+That love is life,
+And life hath immortality.
+
+This, dost thou doubt, sweet?
+Then have I
+Nothing to show
+But Calvary.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Have you got a brook in your little heart,
+Where bashful flowers blow,
+And blushing birds go down to drink,
+And shadows tremble so?
+
+And nobody knows, so still it flows,
+That any brook is there;
+And yet your little draught of life
+Is daily drunken there.
+
+Then look out for the little brook in March,
+When the rivers overflow,
+And the snows come hurrying from the hills,
+And the bridges often go.
+
+And later, in August it may be,
+When the meadows parching lie,
+Beware, lest this little brook of life
+Some burning noon go dry!
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+TRANSPLANTED.
+
+As if some little Arctic flower,
+Upon the polar hem,
+Went wandering down the latitudes,
+Until it puzzled came
+To continents of summer,
+To firmaments of sun,
+To strange, bright crowds of flowers,
+And birds of foreign tongue!
+I say, as if this little flower
+To Eden wandered in --
+What then? Why, nothing, only,
+Your inference therefrom!
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE OUTLET.
+
+My river runs to thee:
+Blue sea, wilt welcome me?
+
+My river waits reply.
+Oh sea, look graciously!
+
+I'll fetch thee brooks
+From spotted nooks, --
+
+Say, sea,
+Take me!
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+IN VAIN.
+
+I cannot live with you,
+It would be life,
+And life is over there
+Behind the shelf
+
+The sexton keeps the key to,
+Putting up
+Our life, his porcelain,
+Like a cup
+
+Discarded of the housewife,
+Quaint or broken;
+A newer Sevres pleases,
+Old ones crack.
+
+I could not die with you,
+For one must wait
+To shut the other's gaze down, --
+You could not.
+
+And I, could I stand by
+And see you freeze,
+Without my right of frost,
+Death's privilege?
+
+Nor could I rise with you,
+Because your face
+Would put out Jesus',
+That new grace
+
+Glow plain and foreign
+On my homesick eye,
+Except that you, than he
+Shone closer by.
+
+They'd judge us -- how?
+For you served Heaven, you know,
+Or sought to;
+I could not,
+
+Because you saturated sight,
+And I had no more eyes
+For sordid excellence
+As Paradise.
+
+And were you lost, I would be,
+Though my name
+Rang loudest
+On the heavenly fame.
+
+And were you saved,
+And I condemned to be
+Where you were not,
+That self were hell to me.
+
+So we must keep apart,
+You there, I here,
+With just the door ajar
+That oceans are,
+And prayer,
+And that pale sustenance,
+Despair!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+RENUNCIATION.
+
+There came a day at summer's full
+Entirely for me;
+I thought that such were for the saints,
+Where revelations be.
+
+The sun, as common, went abroad,
+The flowers, accustomed, blew,
+As if no soul the solstice passed
+That maketh all things new.
+
+The time was scarce profaned by speech;
+The symbol of a word
+Was needless, as at sacrament
+The wardrobe of our Lord.
+
+Each was to each the sealed church,
+Permitted to commune this time,
+Lest we too awkward show
+At supper of the Lamb.
+
+The hours slid fast, as hours will,
+Clutched tight by greedy hands;
+So faces on two decks look back,
+Bound to opposing lands.
+
+And so, when all the time had failed,
+Without external sound,
+Each bound the other's crucifix,
+We gave no other bond.
+
+Sufficient troth that we shall rise --
+Deposed, at length, the grave --
+To that new marriage, justified
+Through Calvaries of Love!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+LOVE'S BAPTISM.
+
+I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs;
+The name they dropped upon my face
+With water, in the country church,
+Is finished using now,
+And they can put it with my dolls,
+My childhood, and the string of spools
+I've finished threading too.
+
+Baptized before without the choice,
+But this time consciously, of grace
+Unto supremest name,
+Called to my full, the crescent dropped,
+Existence's whole arc filled up
+With one small diadem.
+
+My second rank, too small the first,
+Crowned, crowing on my father's breast,
+A half unconscious queen;
+But this time, adequate, erect,
+With will to choose or to reject.
+And I choose -- just a throne.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+RESURRECTION.
+
+'T was a long parting, but the time
+For interview had come;
+Before the judgment-seat of God,
+The last and second time
+
+These fleshless lovers met,
+A heaven in a gaze,
+A heaven of heavens, the privilege
+Of one another's eyes.
+
+No lifetime set on them,
+Apparelled as the new
+Unborn, except they had beheld,
+Born everlasting now.
+
+Was bridal e'er like this?
+A paradise, the host,
+And cherubim and seraphim
+The most familiar guest.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+APOCALYPSE.
+
+I'm wife; I've finished that,
+That other state;
+I'm Czar, I'm woman now:
+It's safer so.
+
+How odd the girl's life looks
+Behind this soft eclipse!
+I think that earth seems so
+To those in heaven now.
+
+This being comfort, then
+That other kind was pain;
+But why compare?
+I'm wife! stop there!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+THE WIFE.
+
+She rose to his requirement, dropped
+The playthings of her life
+To take the honorable work
+Of woman and of wife.
+
+If aught she missed in her new day
+Of amplitude, or awe,
+Or first prospective, or the gold
+In using wore away,
+
+It lay unmentioned, as the sea
+Develops pearl and weed,
+But only to himself is known
+The fathoms they abide.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+APOTHEOSIS.
+
+Come slowly, Eden!
+Lips unused to thee,
+Bashful, sip thy jasmines,
+As the fainting bee,
+
+Reaching late his flower,
+Round her chamber hums,
+Counts his nectars -- enters,
+And is lost in balms!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III. NATURE.
+
+I.
+
+New feet within my garden go,
+New fingers stir the sod;
+A troubadour upon the elm
+Betrays the solitude.
+
+New children play upon the green,
+New weary sleep below;
+And still the pensive spring returns,
+And still the punctual snow!
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+MAY-FLOWER.
+
+Pink, small, and punctual,
+Aromatic, low,
+Covert in April,
+Candid in May,
+
+Dear to the moss,
+Known by the knoll,
+Next to the robin
+In every human soul.
+
+Bold little beauty,
+Bedecked with thee,
+Nature forswears
+Antiquity.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+WHY?
+
+The murmur of a bee
+A witchcraft yieldeth me.
+If any ask me why,
+'T were easier to die
+Than tell.
+
+The red upon the hill
+Taketh away my will;
+If anybody sneer,
+Take care, for God is here,
+That's all.
+
+The breaking of the day
+Addeth to my degree;
+If any ask me how,
+Artist, who drew me so,
+Must tell!
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower?
+But I could never sell.
+If you would like to borrow
+Until the daffodil
+
+Unties her yellow bonnet
+Beneath the village door,
+Until the bees, from clover rows
+Their hock and sherry draw,
+
+Why, I will lend until just then,
+But not an hour more!
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The pedigree of honey
+Does not concern the bee;
+A clover, any time, to him
+Is aristocracy.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A SERVICE OF SONG.
+
+Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
+I keep it staying at home,
+With a bobolink for a chorister,
+And an orchard for a dome.
+
+Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
+I just wear my wings,
+And instead of tolling the bell for church,
+Our little sexton sings.
+
+God preaches, -- a noted clergyman, --
+And the sermon is never long;
+So instead of getting to heaven at last,
+I'm going all along!
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+The bee is not afraid of me,
+I know the butterfly;
+The pretty people in the woods
+Receive me cordially.
+
+The brooks laugh louder when I come,
+The breezes madder play.
+Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists?
+Wherefore, O summer's day?
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+SUMMER'S ARMIES.
+
+Some rainbow coming from the fair!
+Some vision of the world Cashmere
+I confidently see!
+Or else a peacock's purple train,
+Feather by feather, on the plain
+Fritters itself away!
+
+The dreamy butterflies bestir,
+Lethargic pools resume the whir
+Of last year's sundered tune.
+From some old fortress on the sun
+Baronial bees march, one by one,
+In murmuring platoon!
+
+The robins stand as thick to-day
+As flakes of snow stood yesterday,
+On fence and roof and twig.
+The orchis binds her feather on
+For her old lover, Don the Sun,
+Revisiting the bog!
+
+Without commander, countless, still,
+The regiment of wood and hill
+In bright detachment stand.
+Behold! Whose multitudes are these?
+The children of whose turbaned seas,
+Or what Circassian land?
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE GRASS.
+
+The grass so little has to do, --
+A sphere of simple green,
+With only butterflies to brood,
+And bees to entertain,
+
+And stir all day to pretty tunes
+The breezes fetch along,
+And hold the sunshine in its lap
+And bow to everything;
+
+And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
+And make itself so fine, --
+A duchess were too common
+For such a noticing.
+
+And even when it dies, to pass
+In odors so divine,
+As lowly spices gone to sleep,
+Or amulets of pine.
+
+And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
+And dream the days away, --
+The grass so little has to do,
+I wish I were the hay!
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+A little road not made of man,
+Enabled of the eye,
+Accessible to thill of bee,
+Or cart of butterfly.
+
+If town it have, beyond itself,
+'T is that I cannot say;
+I only sigh, -- no vehicle
+Bears me along that way.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+SUMMER SHOWER.
+
+A drop fell on the apple tree,
+Another on the roof;
+A half a dozen kissed the eaves,
+And made the gables laugh.
+
+A few went out to help the brook,
+That went to help the sea.
+Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,
+What necklaces could be!
+
+The dust replaced in hoisted roads,
+The birds jocoser sung;
+The sunshine threw his hat away,
+The orchards spangles hung.
+
+The breezes brought dejected lutes,
+And bathed them in the glee;
+The East put out a single flag,
+And signed the fete away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+PSALM OF THE DAY.
+
+A something in a summer's day,
+As slow her flambeaux burn away,
+Which solemnizes me.
+
+A something in a summer's noon, --
+An azure depth, a wordless tune,
+Transcending ecstasy.
+
+And still within a summer's night
+A something so transporting bright,
+I clap my hands to see;
+
+Then veil my too inspecting face,
+Lest such a subtle, shimmering grace
+Flutter too far for me.
+
+The wizard-fingers never rest,
+The purple brook within the breast
+Still chafes its narrow bed;
+
+Still rears the East her amber flag,
+Guides still the sun along the crag
+His caravan of red,
+
+Like flowers that heard the tale of dews,
+But never deemed the dripping prize
+Awaited their low brows;
+
+Or bees, that thought the summer's name
+Some rumor of delirium
+No summer could for them;
+
+Or Arctic creature, dimly stirred
+By tropic hint, -- some travelled bird
+Imported to the wood;
+
+Or wind's bright signal to the ear,
+Making that homely and severe,
+Contented, known, before
+
+The heaven unexpected came,
+To lives that thought their worshipping
+A too presumptuous psalm.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE SEA OF SUNSET.
+
+This is the land the sunset washes,
+These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;
+Where it rose, or whither it rushes,
+These are the western mystery!
+
+Night after night her purple traffic
+Strews the landing with opal bales;
+Merchantmen poise upon horizons,
+Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+PURPLE CLOVER.
+
+There is a flower that bees prefer,
+And butterflies desire;
+To gain the purple democrat
+The humming-birds aspire.
+
+And whatsoever insect pass,
+A honey bears away
+Proportioned to his several dearth
+And her capacity.
+
+Her face is rounder than the moon,
+And ruddier than the gown
+Of orchis in the pasture,
+Or rhododendron worn.
+
+She doth not wait for June;
+Before the world is green
+Her sturdy little countenance
+Against the wind is seen,
+
+Contending with the grass,
+Near kinsman to herself,
+For privilege of sod and sun,
+Sweet litigants for life.
+
+And when the hills are full,
+And newer fashions blow,
+Doth not retract a single spice
+For pang of jealousy.
+
+Her public is the noon,
+Her providence the sun,
+Her progress by the bee proclaimed
+In sovereign, swerveless tune.
+
+The bravest of the host,
+Surrendering the last,
+Nor even of defeat aware
+When cancelled by the frost.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE BEE.
+
+Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
+I hear the level bee:
+A jar across the flowers goes,
+Their velvet masonry
+
+Withstands until the sweet assault
+Their chivalry consumes,
+While he, victorious, tilts away
+To vanquish other blooms.
+
+His feet are shod with gauze,
+His helmet is of gold;
+His breast, a single onyx
+With chrysoprase, inlaid.
+
+His labor is a chant,
+His idleness a tune;
+Oh, for a bee's experience
+Of clovers and of noon!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
+Indicative that suns go down;
+The notice to the startled grass
+That darkness is about to pass.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+As children bid the guest good-night,
+And then reluctant turn,
+My flowers raise their pretty lips,
+Then put their nightgowns on.
+
+As children caper when they wake,
+Merry that it is morn,
+My flowers from a hundred cribs
+Will peep, and prance again.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+Angels in the early morning
+May be seen the dews among,
+Stooping, plucking, smiling, flying:
+Do the buds to them belong?
+
+Angels when the sun is hottest
+May be seen the sands among,
+Stooping, plucking, sighing, flying;
+Parched the flowers they bear along.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+So bashful when I spied her,
+So pretty, so ashamed!
+So hidden in her leaflets,
+Lest anybody find;
+
+So breathless till I passed her,
+So helpless when I turned
+And bore her, struggling, blushing,
+Her simple haunts beyond!
+
+For whom I robbed the dingle,
+For whom betrayed the dell,
+Many will doubtless ask me,
+But I shall never tell!
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+TWO WORLDS.
+
+It makes no difference abroad,
+The seasons fit the same,
+The mornings blossom into noons,
+And split their pods of flame.
+
+Wild-flowers kindle in the woods,
+The brooks brag all the day;
+No blackbird bates his jargoning
+For passing Calvary.
+
+Auto-da-fe and judgment
+Are nothing to the bee;
+His separation from his rose
+To him seems misery.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+THE MOUNTAIN.
+
+The mountain sat upon the plain
+In his eternal chair,
+His observation omnifold,
+His inquest everywhere.
+
+The seasons prayed around his knees,
+Like children round a sire:
+Grandfather of the days is he,
+Of dawn the ancestor.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+A DAY.
+
+I'll tell you how the sun rose, --
+A ribbon at a time.
+The steeples swam in amethyst,
+The news like squirrels ran.
+
+The hills untied their bonnets,
+The bobolinks begun.
+Then I said softly to myself,
+"That must have been the sun!"
+
+        *  *  *
+
+But how he set, I know not.
+There seemed a purple stile
+Which little yellow boys and girls
+Were climbing all the while
+
+Till when they reached the other side,
+A dominie in gray
+Put gently up the evening bars,
+And led the flock away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+The butterfly's assumption-gown,
+In chrysoprase apartments hung,
+  This afternoon put on.
+
+How condescending to descend,
+And be of buttercups the friend
+  In a New England town!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+THE WIND.
+
+Of all the sounds despatched abroad,
+There's not a charge to me
+Like that old measure in the boughs,
+That phraseless melody
+
+The wind does, working like a hand
+Whose fingers brush the sky,
+Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
+Permitted gods and me.
+
+When winds go round and round in bands,
+And thrum upon the door,
+And birds take places overhead,
+To bear them orchestra,
+
+I crave him grace, of summer boughs,
+If such an outcast be,
+He never heard that fleshless chant
+Rise solemn in the tree,
+
+As if some caravan of sound
+On deserts, in the sky,
+Had broken rank,
+Then knit, and passed
+In seamless company.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+DEATH AND LIFE.
+
+Apparently with no surprise
+To any happy flower,
+The frost beheads it at its play
+In accidental power.
+The blond assassin passes on,
+The sun proceeds unmoved
+To measure off another day
+For an approving God.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+'T WAS later when the summer went
+Than when the cricket came,
+And yet we knew that gentle clock
+Meant nought but going home.
+
+'T was sooner when the cricket went
+Than when the winter came,
+Yet that pathetic pendulum
+Keeps esoteric time.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+INDIAN SUMMER.
+
+These are the days when birds come back,
+A very few, a bird or two,
+To take a backward look.
+
+These are the days when skies put on
+The old, old sophistries of June, --
+A blue and gold mistake.
+
+Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
+Almost thy plausibility
+Induces my belief,
+
+Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
+And softly through the altered air
+Hurries a timid leaf!
+
+Oh, sacrament of summer days,
+Oh, last communion in the haze,
+Permit a child to join,
+
+Thy sacred emblems to partake,
+Thy consecrated bread to break,
+Taste thine immortal wine!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+AUTUMN.
+
+The morns are meeker than they were,
+The nuts are getting brown;
+The berry's cheek is plumper,
+The rose is out of town.
+
+The maple wears a gayer scarf,
+The field a scarlet gown.
+Lest I should be old-fashioned,
+I'll put a trinket on.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+BECLOUDED.
+
+The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
+A travelling flake of snow
+Across a barn or through a rut
+Debates if it will go.
+
+A narrow wind complains all day
+How some one treated him;
+Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
+Without her diadem.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+THE HEMLOCK.
+
+I think the hemlock likes to stand
+Upon a marge of snow;
+It suits his own austerity,
+And satisfies an awe
+
+That men must slake in wilderness,
+Or in the desert cloy, --
+An instinct for the hoar, the bald,
+Lapland's necessity.
+
+The hemlock's nature thrives on cold;
+The gnash of northern winds
+Is sweetest nutriment to him,
+His best Norwegian wines.
+
+To satin races he is nought;
+But children on the Don
+Beneath his tabernacles play,
+And Dnieper wrestlers run.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+There's a certain slant of light,
+On winter afternoons,
+That oppresses, like the weight
+Of cathedral tunes.
+
+Heavenly hurt it gives us;
+We can find no scar,
+But internal difference
+Where the meanings are.
+
+None may teach it anything,
+'T is the seal, despair, --
+An imperial affliction
+Sent us of the air.
+
+When it comes, the landscape listens,
+Shadows hold their breath;
+When it goes, 't is like the distance
+On the look of death.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.
+
+I.
+
+One dignity delays for all,
+One mitred afternoon.
+None can avoid this purple,
+None evade this crown.
+
+Coach it insures, and footmen,
+Chamber and state and throng;
+Bells, also, in the village,
+As we ride grand along.
+
+What dignified attendants,
+What service when we pause!
+How loyally at parting
+Their hundred hats they raise!
+
+How pomp surpassing ermine,
+When simple you and I
+Present our meek escutcheon,
+And claim the rank to die!
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+TOO LATE.
+
+Delayed till she had ceased to know,
+Delayed till in its vest of snow
+   Her loving bosom lay.
+An hour behind the fleeting breath,
+Later by just an hour than death, --
+   Oh, lagging yesterday!
+
+Could she have guessed that it would be;
+Could but a crier of the glee
+   Have climbed the distant hill;
+Had not the bliss so slow a pace, --
+Who knows but this surrendered face
+   Were undefeated still?
+
+Oh, if there may departing be
+Any forgot by victory
+   In her imperial round,
+Show them this meek apparelled thing,
+That could not stop to be a king,
+   Doubtful if it be crowned!
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+ASTRA CASTRA.
+
+Departed to the judgment,
+A mighty afternoon;
+Great clouds like ushers leaning,
+Creation looking on.
+
+The flesh surrendered, cancelled,
+The bodiless begun;
+Two worlds, like audiences, disperse
+And leave the soul alone.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Safe in their alabaster chambers,
+Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
+Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
+Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.
+
+Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
+Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
+Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, --
+Ah, what sagacity perished here!
+
+Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
+Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
+Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
+Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+On this long storm the rainbow rose,
+On this late morn the sun;
+The clouds, like listless elephants,
+Horizons straggled down.
+
+The birds rose smiling in their nests,
+The gales indeed were done;
+Alas! how heedless were the eyes
+On whom the summer shone!
+
+The quiet nonchalance of death
+No daybreak can bestir;
+The slow archangel's syllables
+Must awaken her.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+FROM THE CHRYSALIS.
+
+My cocoon tightens, colors tease,
+I'm feeling for the air;
+A dim capacity for wings
+Degrades the dress I wear.
+
+A power of butterfly must be
+The aptitude to fly,
+Meadows of majesty concedes
+And easy sweeps of sky.
+
+So I must baffle at the hint
+And cipher at the sign,
+And make much blunder, if at last
+I take the clew divine.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+SETTING SAIL.
+
+Exultation is the going
+Of an inland soul to sea, --
+Past the houses, past the headlands,
+Into deep eternity!
+
+Bred as we, among the mountains,
+Can the sailor understand
+The divine intoxication
+Of the first league out from land?
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Look back on time with kindly eyes,
+He doubtless did his best;
+How softly sinks his trembling sun
+In human nature's west!
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+A train went through a burial gate,
+A bird broke forth and sang,
+And trilled, and quivered, and shook his throat
+Till all the churchyard rang;
+
+And then adjusted his little notes,
+And bowed and sang again.
+Doubtless, he thought it meet of him
+To say good-by to men.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+I died for beauty, but was scarce
+Adjusted in the tomb,
+When one who died for truth was lain
+In an adjoining room.
+
+He questioned softly why I failed?
+"For beauty," I replied.
+"And I for truth, -- the two are one;
+We brethren are," he said.
+
+And so, as kinsmen met a night,
+We talked between the rooms,
+Until the moss had reached our lips,
+And covered up our names.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+"TROUBLED ABOUT MANY THINGS."
+
+How many times these low feet staggered,
+Only the soldered mouth can tell;
+Try! can you stir the awful rivet?
+Try! can you lift the hasps of steel?
+
+Stroke the cool forehead, hot so often,
+Lift, if you can, the listless hair;
+Handle the adamantine fingers
+Never a thimble more shall wear.
+
+Buzz the dull flies on the chamber window;
+Brave shines the sun through the freckled pane;
+Fearless the cobweb swings from the ceiling --
+Indolent housewife, in daisies lain!
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+REAL.
+
+I like a look of agony,
+Because I know it 's true;
+Men do not sham convulsion,
+Nor simulate a throe.
+
+The eyes glaze once, and that is death.
+Impossible to feign
+The beads upon the forehead
+By homely anguish strung.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE FUNERAL.
+
+That short, potential stir
+That each can make but once,
+That bustle so illustrious
+'T is almost consequence,
+
+Is the eclat of death.
+Oh, thou unknown renown
+That not a beggar would accept,
+Had he the power to spurn!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+I went to thank her,
+But she slept;
+Her bed a funnelled stone,
+With nosegays at the head and foot,
+That travellers had thrown,
+
+Who went to thank her;
+But she slept.
+'T was short to cross the sea
+To look upon her like, alive,
+But turning back 't was slow.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+I've seen a dying eye
+Run round and round a room
+In search of something, as it seemed,
+Then cloudier become;
+And then, obscure with fog,
+And then be soldered down,
+Without disclosing what it be,
+'T were blessed to have seen.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+REFUGE.
+
+The clouds their backs together laid,
+The north begun to push,
+The forests galloped till they fell,
+The lightning skipped like mice;
+The thunder crumbled like a stuff --
+How good to be safe in tombs,
+Where nature's temper cannot reach,
+Nor vengeance ever comes!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+I never saw a moor,
+I never saw the sea;
+Yet know I how the heather looks,
+And what a wave must be.
+
+I never spoke with God,
+Nor visited in heaven;
+Yet certain am I of the spot
+As if the chart were given.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+PLAYMATES.
+
+God permits industrious angels
+Afternoons to play.
+I met one, -- forgot my school-mates,
+All, for him, straightway.
+
+God calls home the angels promptly
+At the setting sun;
+I missed mine. How dreary marbles,
+After playing Crown!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+To know just how he suffered would be dear;
+To know if any human eyes were near
+To whom he could intrust his wavering gaze,
+Until it settled firm on Paradise.
+
+To know if he was patient, part content,
+Was dying as he thought, or different;
+Was it a pleasant day to die,
+And did the sunshine face his way?
+
+What was his furthest mind, of home, or God,
+Or what the distant say
+At news that he ceased human nature
+On such a day?
+
+And wishes, had he any?
+Just his sigh, accented,
+Had been legible to me.
+And was he confident until
+Ill fluttered out in everlasting well?
+
+And if he spoke, what name was best,
+What first,
+What one broke off with
+At the drowsiest?
+
+Was he afraid, or tranquil?
+Might he know
+How conscious consciousness could grow,
+Till love that was, and love too blest to be,
+Meet -- and the junction be Eternity?
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+The last night that she lived,
+It was a common night,
+Except the dying; this to us
+Made nature different.
+
+We noticed smallest things, --
+Things overlooked before,
+By this great light upon our minds
+Italicized, as 't were.
+
+That others could exist
+While she must finish quite,
+A jealousy for her arose
+So nearly infinite.
+
+We waited while she passed;
+It was a narrow time,
+Too jostled were our souls to speak,
+At length the notice came.
+
+She mentioned, and forgot;
+Then lightly as a reed
+Bent to the water, shivered scarce,
+Consented, and was dead.
+
+And we, we placed the hair,
+And drew the head erect;
+And then an awful leisure was,
+Our faith to regulate.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+THE FIRST LESSON.
+
+Not in this world to see his face
+Sounds long, until I read the place
+Where this is said to be
+But just the primer to a life
+Unopened, rare, upon the shelf,
+Clasped yet to him and me.
+
+And yet, my primer suits me so
+I would not choose a book to know
+Than that, be sweeter wise;
+Might some one else so learned be,
+And leave me just my A B C,
+Himself could have the skies.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+The bustle in a house
+The morning after death
+Is solemnest of industries
+Enacted upon earth, --
+
+The sweeping up the heart,
+And putting love away
+We shall not want to use again
+Until eternity.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+I reason, earth is short,
+And anguish absolute,
+And many hurt;
+But what of that?
+
+I reason, we could die:
+The best vitality
+Cannot excel decay;
+But what of that?
+
+I reason that in heaven
+Somehow, it will be even,
+Some new equation given;
+But what of that?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+Afraid? Of whom am I afraid?
+Not death; for who is he?
+The porter of my father's lodge
+As much abasheth me.
+
+Of life? 'T were odd I fear a thing
+That comprehendeth me
+In one or more existences
+At Deity's decree.
+
+Of resurrection? Is the east
+Afraid to trust the morn
+With her fastidious forehead?
+As soon impeach my crown!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+DYING.
+
+The sun kept setting, setting still;
+No hue of afternoon
+Upon the village I perceived, --
+From house to house 't was noon.
+
+The dusk kept dropping, dropping still;
+No dew upon the grass,
+But only on my forehead stopped,
+And wandered in my face.
+
+My feet kept drowsing, drowsing still,
+My fingers were awake;
+Yet why so little sound myself
+Unto my seeming make?
+
+How well I knew the light before!
+I could not see it now.
+'T is dying, I am doing; but
+I'm not afraid to know.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+Two swimmers wrestled on the spar
+Until the morning sun,
+When one turned smiling to the land.
+O God, the other one!
+
+The stray ships passing spied a face
+Upon the waters borne,
+With eyes in death still begging raised,
+And hands beseeching thrown.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+THE CHARIOT.
+
+Because I could not stop for Death,
+He kindly stopped for me;
+The carriage held but just ourselves
+And Immortality.
+
+We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
+And I had put away
+My labor, and my leisure too,
+For his civility.
+
+We passed the school where children played,
+Their lessons scarcely done;
+We passed the fields of gazing grain,
+We passed the setting sun.
+
+We paused before a house that seemed
+A swelling of the ground;
+The roof was scarcely visible,
+The cornice but a mound.
+
+Since then 't is centuries; but each
+Feels shorter than the day
+I first surmised the horses' heads
+Were toward eternity.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+She went as quiet as the dew
+From a familiar flower.
+Not like the dew did she return
+At the accustomed hour!
+
+She dropt as softly as a star
+From out my summer's eve;
+Less skilful than Leverrier
+It's sorer to believe!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+RESURGAM.
+
+At last to be identified!
+At last, the lamps upon thy side,
+The rest of life to see!
+Past midnight, past the morning star!
+Past sunrise! Ah! what leagues there are
+Between our feet and day!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+Except to heaven, she is nought;
+Except for angels, lone;
+Except to some wide-wandering bee,
+A flower superfluous blown;
+
+Except for winds, provincial;
+Except by butterflies,
+Unnoticed as a single dew
+That on the acre lies.
+
+The smallest housewife in the grass,
+Yet take her from the lawn,
+And somebody has lost the face
+That made existence home!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+Death is a dialogue between
+The spirit and the dust.
+"Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,
+I have another trust."
+
+Death doubts it, argues from the ground.
+The Spirit turns away,
+Just laying off, for evidence,
+An overcoat of clay.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+It was too late for man,
+But early yet for God;
+Creation impotent to help,
+But prayer remained our side.
+
+How excellent the heaven,
+When earth cannot be had;
+How hospitable, then, the face
+Of our old neighbor, God!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+ALONG THE POTOMAC.
+
+When I was small, a woman died.
+To-day her only boy
+Went up from the Potomac,
+His face all victory,
+
+To look at her; how slowly
+The seasons must have turned
+Till bullets clipt an angle,
+And he passed quickly round!
+
+If pride shall be in Paradise
+I never can decide;
+Of their imperial conduct,
+No person testified.
+
+But proud in apparition,
+That woman and her boy
+Pass back and forth before my brain,
+As ever in the sky.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+The daisy follows soft the sun,
+And when his golden walk is done,
+   Sits shyly at his feet.
+He, waking, finds the flower near.
+"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"
+   "Because, sir, love is sweet!"
+
+We are the flower, Thou the sun!
+Forgive us, if as days decline,
+   We nearer steal to Thee, --
+Enamoured of the parting west,
+The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
+   Night's possibility!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+EMANCIPATION.
+
+No rack can torture me,
+My soul's at liberty
+Behind this mortal bone
+There knits a bolder one
+
+You cannot prick with saw,
+Nor rend with scymitar.
+Two bodies therefore be;
+Bind one, and one will flee.
+
+The eagle of his nest
+No easier divest
+And gain the sky,
+Than mayest thou,
+
+Except thyself may be
+Thine enemy;
+Captivity is consciousness,
+So's liberty.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+LOST.
+
+I lost a world the other day.
+Has anybody found?
+You'll know it by the row of stars
+Around its forehead bound.
+
+A rich man might not notice it;
+Yet to my frugal eye
+Of more esteem than ducats.
+Oh, find it, sir, for me!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+If I shouldn't be alive
+When the robins come,
+Give the one in red cravat
+A memorial crumb.
+
+If I couldn't thank you,
+Being just asleep,
+You will know I'm trying
+With my granite lip!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+Sleep is supposed to be,
+By souls of sanity,
+The shutting of the eye.
+
+Sleep is the station grand
+Down which on either hand
+The hosts of witness stand!
+
+Morn is supposed to be,
+By people of degree,
+The breaking of the day.
+
+Morning has not occurred!
+That shall aurora be
+East of eternity;
+
+One with the banner gay,
+One in the red array, --
+That is the break of day.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+I shall know why, when time is over,
+And I have ceased to wonder why;
+Christ will explain each separate anguish
+In the fair schoolroom of the sky.
+
+He will tell me what Peter promised,
+And I, for wonder at his woe,
+I shall forget the drop of anguish
+That scalds me now, that scalds me now.
+
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+I never lost as much but twice,
+And that was in the sod;
+Twice have I stood a beggar
+Before the door of God!
+
+Angels, twice descending,
+Reimbursed my store.
+Burglar, banker, father,
+I am poor once more!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+by EMILY DICKINSON
+
+Second Series
+
+
+
+
+Edited by two of her friends
+
+MABEL LOOMIS TODD and T.W. HIGGINSON
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily Dickinson's
+poems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modern
+artificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of the
+qualities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatest
+themes,--life and love and death. That "irresistible needle-touch,"
+as one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the very
+core of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic as
+it has been unexpected even to those who knew best her compelling
+power.  This second volume, while open to the same criticism as to
+form with its predecessor, shows also the same shining beauties.
+
+Although Emily Dickinson had been in the habit of sending
+occasional poems to friends and correspondents, the full extent of
+her writing was by no means imagined by them. Her friend "H.H."
+must at least have suspected it, for in a letter dated 5th
+September, 1884, she wrote:--
+
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,-- What portfolios full of verses
+you must have! It is a cruel wrong to your "day and
+generation" that you will not give them light.
+
+If such a thing should happen as that I should outlive
+you, I wish you would make me your literary legatee
+and executor. Surely after you are what is called
+"dead" you will be willing that the poor ghosts you
+have left behind should be cheered and pleased by your
+verses, will you not? You ought to be. I do not think
+we have a right to withhold from the world a word or
+a thought any more than a deed which might help a
+single soul. . . .
+
+                Truly yours,
+
+                        HELEN JACKSON.
+
+
+The "portfolios" were found, shortly after Emily Dickinson's death,
+by her sister and only surviving housemate. Most of the poems had
+been carefully copied on sheets of note-paper, and tied in little
+fascicules, each of six or eight sheets. While many of them bear
+evidence of having been thrown off at white heat, still more had
+received thoughtful revision. There is the frequent addition of
+rather perplexing foot-notes, affording large choice of words and
+phrases. And in the copies which she sent to friends, sometimes one
+form, sometimes another, is found to have been used. Without
+important exception, her friends have generously placed at the
+disposal of the Editors any poems they had received from her; and
+these have given the obvious advantage of comparison among several
+renderings of the same verse.
+
+To what further rigorous pruning her verses would have been
+subjected had she published them herself, we cannot know. They
+should be regarded in many cases as merely the first strong and
+suggestive sketches of an artist, intended to be embodied at some
+time in the finished picture.
+
+Emily Dickinson appears to have written her first poems in the
+winter of 1862. In a letter to oone of the present Editors the
+April following, she says, "I made no verse, but one or two, until
+this winter."
+
+The handwriting was at first somewhat like the delicate, running
+Italian hand of our elder gentlewomen; but as she advanced in
+breadth of thought, it grew bolder and more abrupt, until in her
+latest years each letter stood distinct and separate from its
+fellows. In most of her poems, particularly the later ones,
+everything by way of punctuation was discarded, except numerous
+dashes; and all important words began with capitals. The effect of
+a page of her more recent manuscript is exceedingly quaint and
+strong.  The fac-simile given in the present volume is from one of
+the earlier transition periods. Although there is nowhere a date,
+the handwriting makes it possible to arrange the poems with general
+chronologic accuracy.
+
+As a rule, the verses were without titles; but "A Country Burial,"
+"A Thunder-Storm," "The Humming-Bird," and a few others were named
+by their author, frequently at the end,--sometimes only in the
+accompanying note, if sent to a friend.
+
+The variation of readings, with the fact that she often wrote in
+pencil and not always clearly, have at times thrown a good deal of
+responsibility upon her Editors. But all interference not
+absolutely inevitable has been avoided. The very roughness of her
+rendering is part of herself, and not lightly to be touched; for it
+seems in many cases that she intentionally avoided the smoother and
+more usual rhymes.
+
+Like impressionist pictures, or Wagner's rugged music, the very
+absence of conventional form challenges attention. In Emily
+Dickinson's exacting hands, the especial, intrinsic fitness of a
+particular order of words might not be sacrificed to anything
+virtually extrinsic; and her verses all show a strange cadence of
+inner rhythmical music. Lines are always daringly constructed, and
+the "thought-rhyme" appears frequently,--appealing, indeed, to an
+unrecognized sense more elusive than hearing.
+
+Emily Dickinson scrutinized everything with clear-eyed frankness.
+Every subject was proper ground for legitimate study, even the
+sombre facts of death and burial, and the unknown life beyond. She
+touches these themes sometimes lightly, sometimes almost
+humorously, more often with weird and peculiar power; but she is
+never by any chance frivolous or trivial. And while, as one critic
+has said, she may exhibit toward God "an Emersonian self-possession,"
+it was because she looked upon all life with a candor as unprejudiced
+as it is rare.
+
+She had tried society and the world, and found them lacking.  She
+was not an invalid, and she lived in seclusion from no
+love-disappointment. Her life was the normal blossoming of a nature
+introspective to a high degree, whose best thought could not exist
+in pretence.
+
+Storm, wind, the wild March sky, sunsets and dawns; the birds and
+bees, butterflies and flowers of her garden, with a few trusted
+human friends, were sufficient companionship. The coming of the
+first robin was a jubilee beyond crowning of monarch or birthday of
+pope; the first red leaf hurrying through "the altered air," an
+epoch. Immortality was close about her; and while never morbid or
+melancholy, she lived in its presence.
+
+                                MABEL LOOMIS TODD.
+
+        AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS,
+            August, I891.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    My nosegays are for captives;
+       Dim, long-expectant eyes,
+    Fingers denied the plucking,
+       Patient till paradise,
+
+    To such, if they should whisper
+       Of morning and the moor,
+    They bear no other errand,
+       And I, no other prayer.
+
+
+
+
+I. LIFE.
+
+
+I.
+
+I'm nobody!  Who are you?
+Are you nobody, too?
+Then there 's a pair of us -- don't tell!
+They 'd banish us, you know.
+
+How dreary to be somebody!
+How public, like a frog
+To tell your name the livelong day
+To an admiring bog!
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+I bring an unaccustomed wine
+To lips long parching, next to mine,
+And summon them to drink.
+
+Crackling with fever, they essay;
+I turn my brimming eyes away,
+And come next hour to look.
+
+The hands still hug the tardy glass;
+The lips I would have cooled, alas!
+Are so superfluous cold,
+
+I would as soon attempt to warm
+The bosoms where the frost has lain
+Ages beneath the mould.
+
+Some other thirsty there may be
+To whom this would have pointed me
+Had it remained to speak.
+
+And so I always bear the cup
+If, haply, mine may be the drop
+Some pilgrim thirst to slake, --
+
+If, haply, any say to me,
+"Unto the little, unto me,"
+When I at last awake.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The nearest dream recedes, unrealized.
+      The heaven we chase
+      Like the June bee
+      Before the school-boy
+      Invites the race;
+      Stoops to an easy clover --
+Dips -- evades -- teases -- deploys;
+      Then to the royal clouds
+      Lifts his light pinnace
+      Heedless of the boy
+Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.
+
+      Homesick for steadfast honey,
+      Ah! the bee flies not
+That brews that rare variety.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+We play at paste,
+Till qualified for pearl,
+Then drop the paste,
+And deem ourself a fool.
+The shapes, though, were similar,
+And our new hands
+Learned gem-tactics
+Practising sands.
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+I found the phrase to every thought
+I ever had, but one;
+And that defies me, -- as a hand
+Did try to chalk the sun
+
+To races nurtured in the dark; --
+How would your own begin?
+Can blaze be done in cochineal,
+Or noon in mazarin?
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+HOPE.
+
+Hope is the thing with feathers
+That perches in the soul,
+And sings the tune without the words,
+And never stops at all,
+
+And sweetest in the gale is heard;
+And sore must be the storm
+That could abash the little bird
+That kept so many warm.
+
+I 've heard it in the chillest land,
+And on the strangest sea;
+Yet, never, in extremity,
+It asked a crumb of me.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+THE WHITE HEAT.
+
+Dare you see a soul at the white heat?
+   Then crouch within the door.
+Red is the fire's common tint;
+   But when the vivid ore
+
+Has sated flame's conditions,
+   Its quivering substance plays
+Without a color but the light
+   Of unanointed blaze.
+
+Least village boasts its blacksmith,
+   Whose anvil's even din
+Stands symbol for the finer forge
+   That soundless tugs within,
+
+Refining these impatient ores
+   With hammer and with blaze,
+Until the designated light
+   Repudiate the forge.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+TRIUMPHANT.
+
+Who never lost, are unprepared
+A coronet to find;
+Who never thirsted, flagons
+And cooling tamarind.
+
+Who never climbed the weary league --
+Can such a foot explore
+The purple territories
+On Pizarro's shore?
+
+How many legions overcome?
+The emperor will say.
+How many colors taken
+On Revolution Day?
+
+How many bullets bearest?
+The royal scar hast thou?
+Angels, write "Promoted"
+On this soldier's brow!
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE TEST.
+
+I can wade grief,
+Whole pools of it, --
+I 'm used to that.
+But the least push of joy
+Breaks up my feet,
+And I tip -- drunken.
+Let no pebble smile,
+'T was the new liquor, --
+That was all!
+
+Power is only pain,
+Stranded, through discipline,
+Till weights will hang.
+Give balm to giants,
+And they 'll wilt, like men.
+Give Himmaleh, --
+They 'll carry him!
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+ESCAPE.
+
+I never hear the word "escape"
+Without a quicker blood,
+A sudden expectation,
+A flying attitude.
+
+I never hear of prisons broad
+By soldiers battered down,
+But I tug childish at my bars, --
+Only to fail again!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+COMPENSATION.
+
+For each ecstatic instant
+We must an anguish pay
+In keen and quivering ratio
+To the ecstasy.
+
+For each beloved hour
+Sharp pittances of years,
+Bitter contested farthings
+And coffers heaped with tears.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+THE MARTYRS.
+
+Through the straight pass of suffering
+The martyrs even trod,
+Their feet upon temptation,
+Their faces upon God.
+
+A stately, shriven company;
+Convulsion playing round,
+Harmless as streaks of meteor
+Upon a planet's bound.
+
+Their faith the everlasting troth;
+Their expectation fair;
+The needle to the north degree
+Wades so, through polar air.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+A PRAYER.
+
+I meant to have but modest needs,
+Such as content, and heaven;
+Within my income these could lie,
+And life and I keep even.
+
+But since the last included both,
+It would suffice my prayer
+But just for one to stipulate,
+And grace would grant the pair.
+
+And so, upon this wise I prayed, --
+Great Spirit, give to me
+A heaven not so large as yours,
+But large enough for me.
+
+A smile suffused Jehovah's face;
+The cherubim withdrew;
+Grave saints stole out to look at me,
+And showed their dimples, too.
+
+I left the place with all my might, --
+My prayer away I threw;
+The quiet ages picked it up,
+And Judgment twinkled, too,
+
+That one so honest be extant
+As take the tale for true
+That "Whatsoever you shall ask,
+Itself be given you."
+
+But I, grown shrewder, scan the skies
+With a suspicious air, --
+As children, swindled for the first,
+All swindlers be, infer.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+The thought beneath so slight a film
+Is more distinctly seen, --
+As laces just reveal the surge,
+Or mists the Apennine.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+The soul unto itself
+Is an imperial friend, --
+Or the most agonizing spy
+An enemy could send.
+
+Secure against its own,
+No treason it can fear;
+Itself its sovereign, of itself
+The soul should stand in awe.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Surgeons must be very careful
+When they take the knife!
+Underneath their fine incisions
+Stirs the culprit, -- Life!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+THE RAILWAY TRAIN.
+
+I like to see it lap the miles,
+And lick the valleys up,
+And stop to feed itself at tanks;
+And then, prodigious, step
+
+Around a pile of mountains,
+And, supercilious, peer
+In shanties by the sides of roads;
+And then a quarry pare
+
+To fit its sides, and crawl between,
+Complaining all the while
+In horrid, hooting stanza;
+Then chase itself down hill
+
+And neigh like Boanerges;
+Then, punctual as a star,
+Stop -- docile and omnipotent --
+At its own stable door.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE SHOW.
+
+The show is not the show,
+But they that go.
+Menagerie to me
+My neighbor be.
+Fair play --
+Both went to see.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+Delight becomes pictorial
+When viewed through pain, --
+More fair, because impossible
+That any gain.
+
+The mountain at a given distance
+In amber lies;
+Approached, the amber flits a little, --
+And that 's the skies!
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+A thought went up my mind to-day
+That I have had before,
+But did not finish, -- some way back,
+I could not fix the year,
+
+Nor where it went, nor why it came
+The second time to me,
+Nor definitely what it was,
+Have I the art to say.
+
+But somewhere in my soul, I know
+I 've met the thing before;
+It just reminded me -- 't was all --
+And came my way no more.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+Is Heaven a physician?
+They say that He can heal,
+But medicine posthumous
+   Is unavailable.
+
+Is Heaven an exchequer?
+   They speak of what we owe;
+But that negotiation
+   I 'm not a party to.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+THE RETURN.
+
+Though I get home how late, how late!
+So I get home, 't will compensate.
+Better will be the ecstasy
+That they have done expecting me,
+When, night descending, dumb and dark,
+They hear my unexpected knock.
+Transporting must the moment be,
+Brewed from decades of agony!
+
+To think just how the fire will burn,
+Just how long-cheated eyes will turn
+To wonder what myself will say,
+And what itself will say to me,
+Beguiles the centuries of way!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+A poor torn heart, a tattered heart,
+That sat it down to rest,
+Nor noticed that the ebbing day
+Flowed silver to the west,
+Nor noticed night did soft descend
+Nor constellation burn,
+Intent upon the vision
+Of latitudes unknown.
+
+The angels, happening that way,
+This dusty heart espied;
+Tenderly took it up from toil
+And carried it to God.
+There, -- sandals for the barefoot;
+There, -- gathered from the gales,
+Do the blue havens by the hand
+Lead the wandering sails.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+TOO MUCH.
+
+I should have been too glad, I see,
+Too lifted for the scant degree
+   Of life's penurious round;
+My little circuit would have shamed
+This new circumference, have blamed
+   The homelier time behind.
+
+I should have been too saved, I see,
+Too rescued; fear too dim to me
+   That I could spell the prayer
+I knew so perfect yesterday, --
+That scalding one, "Sabachthani,"
+   Recited fluent here.
+
+Earth would have been too much, I see,
+And heaven not enough for me;
+   I should have had the joy
+Without the fear to justify, --
+The palm without the Calvary;
+   So, Saviour, crucify.
+
+Defeat whets victory, they say;
+The reefs in old Gethsemane
+   Endear the shore beyond.
+'T is beggars banquets best define;
+'T is thirsting vitalizes wine, --
+   Faith faints to understand.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+SHIPWRECK.
+
+It tossed and tossed, --
+A little brig I knew, --
+O'ertook by blast,
+It spun and spun,
+And groped delirious, for morn.
+
+It slipped and slipped,
+As one that drunken stepped;
+Its white foot tripped,
+Then dropped from sight.
+
+Ah, brig, good-night
+To crew and you;
+The ocean's heart too smooth, too blue,
+To break for you.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+Victory comes late,
+And is held low to freezing lips
+Too rapt with frost
+To take it.
+How sweet it would have tasted,
+Just a drop!
+Was God so economical?
+His table 's spread too high for us
+Unless we dine on tip-toe.
+Crumbs fit such little mouths,
+Cherries suit robins;
+The eagle's golden breakfast
+Strangles them.
+God keeps his oath to sparrows,
+Who of little love
+Know how to starve!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+ENOUGH.
+
+God gave a loaf to every bird,
+But just a crumb to me;
+I dare not eat it, though I starve, --
+My poignant luxury
+To own it, touch it, prove the feat
+That made the pellet mine, --
+Too happy in my sparrow chance
+For ampler coveting.
+
+It might be famine all around,
+I could not miss an ear,
+Such plenty smiles upon my board,
+My garner shows so fair.
+I wonder how the rich may feel, --
+An Indiaman -- an Earl?
+I deem that I with but a crumb
+Am sovereign of them all.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+Experiment to me
+Is every one I meet.
+If it contain a kernel?
+The figure of a nut
+
+Presents upon a tree,
+Equally plausibly;
+But meat within is requisite,
+To squirrels and to me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+MY COUNTRY'S WARDROBE.
+
+My country need not change her gown,
+Her triple suit as sweet
+As when 't was cut at Lexington,
+And first pronounced "a fit."
+
+Great Britain disapproves "the stars;"
+Disparagement discreet, --
+There 's something in their attitude
+That taunts her bayonet.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+Faith is a fine invention
+For gentlemen who see;
+But microscopes are prudent
+In an emergency!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+Except the heaven had come so near,
+So seemed to choose my door,
+The distance would not haunt me so;
+I had not hoped before.
+
+But just to hear the grace depart
+I never thought to see,
+Afflicts me with a double loss;
+'T is lost, and lost to me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+Portraits are to daily faces
+As an evening west
+To a fine, pedantic sunshine
+In a satin vest.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+THE DUEL.
+
+I took my power in my hand.
+And went against the world;
+'T was not so much as David had,
+But I was twice as bold.
+
+I aimed my pebble, but myself
+Was all the one that fell.
+Was it Goliath was too large,
+Or only I too small?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+A shady friend for torrid days
+Is easier to find
+Than one of higher temperature
+For frigid hour of mind.
+
+The vane a little to the east
+Scares muslin souls away;
+If broadcloth breasts are firmer
+Than those of organdy,
+
+Who is to blame? The weaver?
+Ah! the bewildering thread!
+The tapestries of paradise
+So notelessly are made!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+THE GOAL.
+
+Each life converges to some centre
+Expressed or still;
+Exists in every human nature
+A goal,
+
+Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be,
+Too fair
+For credibility's temerity
+To dare.
+
+Adored with caution, as a brittle heaven,
+To reach
+Were hopeless as the rainbow's raiment
+To touch,
+
+Yet persevered toward, surer for the distance;
+How high
+Unto the saints' slow diligence
+The sky!
+
+Ungained, it may be, by a life's low venture,
+But then,
+Eternity enables the endeavoring
+Again.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+SIGHT.
+
+Before I got my eye put out,
+I liked as well to see
+As other creatures that have eyes,
+And know no other way.
+
+But were it told to me, to-day,
+That I might have the sky
+For mine, I tell you that my heart
+Would split, for size of me.
+
+The meadows mine, the mountains mine, --
+All forests, stintless stars,
+As much of noon as I could take
+Between my finite eyes.
+
+The motions of the dipping birds,
+The lightning's jointed road,
+For mine to look at when I liked, --
+The news would strike me dead!
+
+So safer, guess, with just my soul
+Upon the window-pane
+Where other creatures put their eyes,
+Incautious of the sun.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+Talk with prudence to a beggar
+Of 'Potosi' and the mines!
+Reverently to the hungry
+Of your viands and your wines!
+
+Cautious, hint to any captive
+You have passed enfranchised feet!
+Anecdotes of air in dungeons
+Have sometimes proved deadly sweet!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+THE PREACHER.
+
+He preached upon "breadth" till it argued him narrow, --
+The broad are too broad to define;
+And of "truth" until it proclaimed him a liar, --
+The truth never flaunted a sign.
+
+Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence
+As gold the pyrites would shun.
+What confusion would cover the innocent Jesus
+To meet so enabled a man!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+Good night! which put the candle out?
+A jealous zephyr, not a doubt.
+   Ah! friend, you little knew
+How long at that celestial wick
+The angels labored diligent;
+   Extinguished, now, for you!
+
+It might have been the lighthouse spark
+Some sailor, rowing in the dark,
+   Had importuned to see!
+It might have been the waning lamp
+That lit the drummer from the camp
+   To purer reveille!
+
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+When I hoped I feared,
+Since I hoped I dared;
+Everywhere alone
+As a church remain;
+Spectre cannot harm,
+Serpent cannot charm;
+He deposes doom,
+Who hath suffered him.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+DEED.
+
+A deed knocks first at thought,
+And then it knocks at will.
+That is the manufacturing spot,
+And will at home and well.
+
+It then goes out an act,
+Or is entombed so still
+That only to the ear of God
+Its doom is audible.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+TIME'S LESSON.
+
+Mine enemy is growing old, --
+I have at last revenge.
+The palate of the hate departs;
+If any would avenge, --
+
+Let him be quick, the viand flits,
+It is a faded meat.
+Anger as soon as fed is dead;
+'T is starving makes it fat.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+REMORSE.
+
+Remorse is memory awake,
+Her companies astir, --
+A presence of departed acts
+At window and at door.
+
+It's past set down before the soul,
+And lighted with a match,
+Perusal to facilitate
+Of its condensed despatch.
+
+Remorse is cureless, -- the disease
+Not even God can heal;
+For 't is his institution, --
+The complement of hell.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+THE SHELTER.
+
+The body grows outside, --
+The more convenient way, --
+That if the spirit like to hide,
+Its temple stands alway
+
+Ajar, secure, inviting;
+It never did betray
+The soul that asked its shelter
+In timid honesty.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+Undue significance a starving man attaches
+To food
+Far off; he sighs, and therefore hopeless,
+And therefore good.
+
+Partaken, it relieves indeed, but proves us
+That spices fly
+In the receipt. It was the distance
+Was savory.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+Heart not so heavy as mine,
+Wending late home,
+As it passed my window
+Whistled itself a tune, --
+
+A careless snatch, a ballad,
+A ditty of the street;
+Yet to my irritated ear
+An anodyne so sweet,
+
+It was as if a bobolink,
+Sauntering this way,
+Carolled and mused and carolled,
+Then bubbled slow away.
+
+It was as if a chirping brook
+Upon a toilsome way
+Set bleeding feet to minuets
+Without the knowing why.
+
+To-morrow, night will come again,
+Weary, perhaps, and sore.
+Ah, bugle, by my window,
+I pray you stroll once more!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+I many times thought peace had come,
+When peace was far away;
+As wrecked men deem they sight the land
+At centre of the sea,
+
+And struggle slacker, but to prove,
+As hopelessly as I,
+How many the fictitious shores
+Before the harbor lie.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+Unto my books so good to turn
+Far ends of tired days;
+It half endears the abstinence,
+And pain is missed in praise.
+
+As flavors cheer retarded guests
+With banquetings to be,
+So spices stimulate the time
+Till my small library.
+
+It may be wilderness without,
+Far feet of failing men,
+But holiday excludes the night,
+And it is bells within.
+
+I thank these kinsmen of the shelf;
+Their countenances bland
+Enamour in prospective,
+And satisfy, obtained.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+This merit hath the worst, --
+It cannot be again.
+When Fate hath taunted last
+And thrown her furthest stone,
+
+The maimed may pause and breathe,
+And glance securely round.
+The deer invites no longer
+Than it eludes the hound.
+
+
+
+
+
+L.
+
+HUNGER.
+
+I had been hungry all the years;
+My noon had come, to dine;
+I, trembling, drew the table near,
+And touched the curious wine.
+
+'T was this on tables I had seen,
+When turning, hungry, lone,
+I looked in windows, for the wealth
+I could not hope to own.
+
+I did not know the ample bread,
+'T was so unlike the crumb
+The birds and I had often shared
+In Nature's dining-room.
+
+The plenty hurt me, 't was so new, --
+Myself felt ill and odd,
+As berry of a mountain bush
+Transplanted to the road.
+
+Nor was I hungry; so I found
+That hunger was a way
+Of persons outside windows,
+The entering takes away.
+
+
+
+
+
+LI.
+
+I gained it so,
+      By climbing slow,
+By catching at the twigs that grow
+Between the bliss and me.
+      It hung so high,
+      As well the sky
+      Attempt by strategy.
+
+
+I said I gained it, --
+      This was all.
+Look, how I clutch it,
+      Lest it fall,
+And I a pauper go;
+Unfitted by an instant's grace
+For the contented beggar's face
+I wore an hour ago.
+
+
+
+
+
+LII.
+
+To learn the transport by the pain,
+As blind men learn the sun;
+To die of thirst, suspecting
+That brooks in meadows run;
+
+To stay the homesick, homesick feet
+Upon a foreign shore
+Haunted by native lands, the while,
+And blue, beloved air --
+
+This is the sovereign anguish,
+This, the signal woe!
+These are the patient laureates
+Whose voices, trained below,
+
+Ascend in ceaseless carol,
+Inaudible, indeed,
+To us, the duller scholars
+Of the mysterious bard!
+
+
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+RETURNING.
+
+I years had been from home,
+And now, before the door,
+I dared not open, lest a face
+I never saw before
+
+Stare vacant into mine
+And ask my business there.
+My business, -- just a life I left,
+Was such still dwelling there?
+
+I fumbled at my nerve,
+I scanned the windows near;
+The silence like an ocean rolled,
+And broke against my ear.
+
+I laughed a wooden laugh
+That I could fear a door,
+Who danger and the dead had faced,
+But never quaked before.
+
+I fitted to the latch
+My hand, with trembling care,
+Lest back the awful door should spring,
+And leave me standing there.
+
+I moved my fingers off
+As cautiously as glass,
+And held my ears, and like a thief
+Fled gasping from the house.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIV.
+
+PRAYER.
+
+Prayer is the little implement
+Through which men reach
+Where presence is denied them.
+They fling their speech
+
+By means of it in God's ear;
+If then He hear,
+This sums the apparatus
+Comprised in prayer.
+
+
+
+
+
+LV.
+
+I know that he exists
+Somewhere, in silence.
+He has hid his rare life
+From our gross eyes.
+
+'T is an instant's play,
+'T is a fond ambush,
+Just to make bliss
+Earn her own surprise!
+
+But should the play
+Prove piercing earnest,
+Should the glee glaze
+In death's stiff stare,
+
+Would not the fun
+Look too expensive?
+Would not the jest
+Have crawled too far?
+
+
+
+
+
+LVI.
+
+MELODIES UNHEARD.
+
+Musicians wrestle everywhere:
+All day, among the crowded air,
+  I hear the silver strife;
+And -- waking long before the dawn --
+Such transport breaks upon the town
+  I think it that "new life!"
+
+It is not bird, it has no nest;
+Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed,
+  Nor tambourine, nor man;
+It is not hymn from pulpit read, --
+The morning stars the treble led
+  On time's first afternoon!
+
+Some say it is the spheres at play!
+Some say that bright majority
+  Of vanished dames and men!
+Some think it service in the place
+Where we, with late, celestial face,
+  Please God, shall ascertain!
+
+
+
+
+
+LVII.
+
+CALLED BACK.
+
+Just lost when I was saved!
+Just felt the world go by!
+Just girt me for the onset with eternity,
+When breath blew back,
+And on the other side
+I heard recede the disappointed tide!
+
+Therefore, as one returned, I feel,
+Odd secrets of the line to tell!
+Some sailor, skirting foreign shores,
+Some pale reporter from the awful doors
+Before the seal!
+
+Next time, to stay!
+Next time, the things to see
+By ear unheard,
+Unscrutinized by eye.
+
+Next time, to tarry,
+While the ages steal, --
+Slow tramp the centuries,
+And the cycles wheel.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II. LOVE.
+
+
+I.
+
+CHOICE.
+
+Of all the souls that stand create
+I have elected one.
+When sense from spirit files away,
+And subterfuge is done;
+
+When that which is and that which was
+Apart, intrinsic, stand,
+And this brief tragedy of flesh
+Is shifted like a sand;
+
+When figures show their royal front
+And mists are carved away, --
+Behold the atom I preferred
+To all the lists of clay!
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+I have no life but this,
+To lead it here;
+Nor any death, but lest
+Dispelled from there;
+
+Nor tie to earths to come,
+Nor action new,
+Except through this extent,
+The realm of you.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Your riches taught me poverty.
+Myself a millionnaire
+In little wealths, -- as girls could boast, --
+Till broad as Buenos Ayre,
+
+You drifted your dominions
+A different Peru;
+And I esteemed all poverty,
+For life's estate with you.
+
+Of mines I little know, myself,
+But just the names of gems, --
+The colors of the commonest;
+And scarce of diadems
+
+So much that, did I meet the queen,
+Her glory I should know:
+But this must be a different wealth,
+To miss it beggars so.
+
+I 'm sure 't is India all day
+To those who look on you
+Without a stint, without a blame, --
+Might I but be the Jew!
+
+I 'm sure it is Golconda,
+Beyond my power to deem, --
+To have a smile for mine each day,
+How better than a gem!
+
+At least, it solaces to know
+That there exists a gold,
+Although I prove it just in time
+Its distance to behold!
+
+It 's far, far treasure to surmise,
+And estimate the pearl
+That slipped my simple fingers through
+While just a girl at school!
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE CONTRACT.
+
+I gave myself to him,
+And took himself for pay.
+The solemn contract of a life
+Was ratified this way.
+
+The wealth might disappoint,
+Myself a poorer prove
+Than this great purchaser suspect,
+The daily own of Love
+
+Depreciate the vision;
+But, till the merchant buy,
+Still fable, in the isles of spice,
+The subtle cargoes lie.
+
+At least, 't is mutual risk, --
+Some found it mutual gain;
+Sweet debt of Life, -- each night to owe,
+Insolvent, every noon.
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE LETTER.
+
+"GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him --
+Tell him the page I didn't write;
+Tell him I only said the syntax,
+And left the verb and the pronoun out.
+Tell him just how the fingers hurried,
+Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
+And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
+So you could see what moved them so.
+
+"Tell him it wasn't a practised writer,
+You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
+You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
+As if it held but the might of a child;
+You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
+Tell him -- No, you may quibble there,
+For it would split his heart to know it,
+And then you and I were silenter.
+
+"Tell him night finished before we finished,
+And the old clock kept neighing 'day!'
+And you got sleepy and begged to be ended --
+What could it hinder so, to say?
+Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
+But if he ask where you are hid
+Until to-morrow, -- happy letter!
+Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!"
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+The way I read a letter 's this:
+'T is first I lock the door,
+And push it with my fingers next,
+For transport it be sure.
+
+And then I go the furthest off
+To counteract a knock;
+Then draw my little letter forth
+And softly pick its lock.
+
+Then, glancing narrow at the wall,
+And narrow at the floor,
+For firm conviction of a mouse
+Not exorcised before,
+
+Peruse how infinite I am
+To -- no one that you know!
+And sigh for lack of heaven, -- but not
+The heaven the creeds bestow.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Wild nights! Wild nights!
+Were I with thee,
+Wild nights should be
+Our luxury!
+
+Futile the winds
+To a heart in port, --
+Done with the compass,
+Done with the chart.
+
+Rowing in Eden!
+Ah! the sea!
+Might I but moor
+To-night in thee!
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+AT HOME.
+
+The night was wide, and furnished scant
+With but a single star,
+That often as a cloud it met
+Blew out itself for fear.
+
+The wind pursued the little bush,
+And drove away the leaves
+November left; then clambered up
+And fretted in the eaves.
+
+No squirrel went abroad;
+A dog's belated feet
+Like intermittent plush were heard
+Adown the empty street.
+
+To feel if blinds be fast,
+And closer to the fire
+Her little rocking-chair to draw,
+And shiver for the poor,
+
+The housewife's gentle task.
+"How pleasanter," said she
+Unto the sofa opposite,
+"The sleet than May -- no thee!"
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+POSSESSION.
+
+Did the harebell loose her girdle
+To the lover bee,
+Would the bee the harebell hallow
+Much as formerly?
+
+Did the paradise, persuaded,
+Yield her moat of pearl,
+Would the Eden be an Eden,
+Or the earl an earl?
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+A charm invests a face
+Imperfectly beheld, --
+The lady dare not lift her veil
+For fear it be dispelled.
+
+But peers beyond her mesh,
+And wishes, and denies, --
+Lest interview annul a want
+That image satisfies.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE LOVERS.
+
+The rose did caper on her cheek,
+Her bodice rose and fell,
+Her pretty speech, like drunken men,
+Did stagger pitiful.
+
+Her fingers fumbled at her work, --
+Her needle would not go;
+What ailed so smart a little maid
+It puzzled me to know,
+
+Till opposite I spied a cheek
+That bore another rose;
+Just opposite, another speech
+That like the drunkard goes;
+
+A vest that, like the bodice, danced
+To the immortal tune, --
+Till those two troubled little clocks
+Ticked softly into one.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+In lands I never saw, they say,
+Immortal Alps look down,
+Whose bonnets touch the firmament,
+Whose sandals touch the town, --
+
+Meek at whose everlasting feet
+A myriad daisies play.
+Which, sir, are you, and which am I,
+Upon an August day?
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+The moon is distant from the sea,
+And yet with amber hands
+She leads him, docile as a boy,
+Along appointed sands.
+
+He never misses a degree;
+Obedient to her eye,
+He comes just so far toward the town,
+Just so far goes away.
+
+Oh, Signor, thine the amber hand,
+And mine the distant sea, --
+Obedient to the least command
+Thine eyes impose on me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+He put the belt around my life, --
+I heard the buckle snap,
+And turned away, imperial,
+My lifetime folding up
+Deliberate, as a duke would do
+A kingdom's title-deed, --
+Henceforth a dedicated sort,
+A member of the cloud.
+
+Yet not too far to come at call,
+And do the little toils
+That make the circuit of the rest,
+And deal occasional smiles
+To lives that stoop to notice mine
+And kindly ask it in, --
+Whose invitation, knew you not
+For whom I must decline?
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE LOST JEWEL.
+
+I held a jewel in my fingers
+And went to sleep.
+The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
+I said: "'T will keep."
+
+I woke and chid my honest fingers, --
+The gem was gone;
+And now an amethyst remembrance
+Is all I own.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+What if I say I shall not wait?
+What if I burst the fleshly gate
+And pass, escaped, to thee?
+What if I file this mortal off,
+See where it hurt me, -- that 's enough, --
+And wade in liberty?
+
+They cannot take us any more, --
+Dungeons may call, and guns implore;
+Unmeaning now, to me,
+As laughter was an hour ago,
+Or laces, or a travelling show,
+Or who died yesterday!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III. NATURE.
+
+
+I.
+
+MOTHER NATURE.
+
+Nature, the gentlest mother,
+Impatient of no child,
+The feeblest or the waywardest, --
+Her admonition mild
+
+In forest and the hill
+By traveller is heard,
+Restraining rampant squirrel
+Or too impetuous bird.
+
+How fair her conversation,
+A summer afternoon, --
+Her household, her assembly;
+And when the sun goes down
+
+Her voice among the aisles
+Incites the timid prayer
+Of the minutest cricket,
+The most unworthy flower.
+
+When all the children sleep
+She turns as long away
+As will suffice to light her lamps;
+Then, bending from the sky
+
+With infinite affection
+And infiniter care,
+Her golden finger on her lip,
+Wills silence everywhere.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+OUT OF THE MORNING.
+
+Will there really be a morning?
+Is there such a thing as day?
+Could I see it from the mountains
+If I were as tall as they?
+
+Has it feet like water-lilies?
+Has it feathers like a bird?
+Is it brought from famous countries
+Of which I have never heard?
+
+Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
+Oh, some wise man from the skies!
+Please to tell a little pilgrim
+Where the place called morning lies!
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+At half-past three a single bird
+Unto a silent sky
+Propounded but a single term
+Of cautious melody.
+
+At half-past four, experiment
+Had subjugated test,
+And lo! her silver principle
+Supplanted all the rest.
+
+At half-past seven, element
+Nor implement was seen,
+And place was where the presence was,
+Circumference between.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+DAY'S PARLOR.
+
+The day came slow, till five o'clock,
+Then sprang before the hills
+Like hindered rubies, or the light
+A sudden musket spills.
+
+The purple could not keep the east,
+The sunrise shook from fold,
+Like breadths of topaz, packed a night,
+The lady just unrolled.
+
+The happy winds their timbrels took;
+The birds, in docile rows,
+Arranged themselves around their prince
+(The wind is prince of those).
+
+The orchard sparkled like a Jew, --
+How mighty 't was, to stay
+A guest in this stupendous place,
+The parlor of the day!
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE SUN'S WOOING.
+
+The sun just touched the morning;
+The morning, happy thing,
+Supposed that he had come to dwell,
+And life would be all spring.
+
+She felt herself supremer, --
+A raised, ethereal thing;
+Henceforth for her what holiday!
+Meanwhile, her wheeling king
+
+Trailed slow along the orchards
+His haughty, spangled hems,
+Leaving a new necessity, --
+The want of diadems!
+
+The morning fluttered, staggered,
+Felt feebly for her crown, --
+Her unanointed forehead
+Henceforth her only one.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE ROBIN.
+
+The robin is the one
+That interrupts the morn
+With hurried, few, express reports
+When March is scarcely on.
+
+The robin is the one
+That overflows the noon
+With her cherubic quantity,
+An April but begun.
+
+The robin is the one
+That speechless from her nest
+Submits that home and certainty
+And sanctity are best.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+THE BUTTERFLY'S DAY.
+
+From cocoon forth a butterfly
+As lady from her door
+Emerged -- a summer afternoon --
+Repairing everywhere,
+
+Without design, that I could trace,
+Except to stray abroad
+On miscellaneous enterprise
+The clovers understood.
+
+Her pretty parasol was seen
+Contracting in a field
+Where men made hay, then struggling hard
+With an opposing cloud,
+
+Where parties, phantom as herself,
+To Nowhere seemed to go
+In purposeless circumference,
+As 't were a tropic show.
+
+And notwithstanding bee that worked,
+And flower that zealous blew,
+This audience of idleness
+Disdained them, from the sky,
+
+Till sundown crept, a steady tide,
+And men that made the hay,
+And afternoon, and butterfly,
+Extinguished in its sea.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THE BLUEBIRD.
+
+Before you thought of spring,
+Except as a surmise,
+You see, God bless his suddenness,
+A fellow in the skies
+Of independent hues,
+A little weather-worn,
+Inspiriting habiliments
+Of indigo and brown.
+
+With specimens of song,
+As if for you to choose,
+Discretion in the interval,
+With gay delays he goes
+To some superior tree
+Without a single leaf,
+And shouts for joy to nobody
+But his seraphic self!
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+APRIL.
+
+An altered look about the hills;
+A Tyrian light the village fills;
+A wider sunrise in the dawn;
+A deeper twilight on the lawn;
+A print of a vermilion foot;
+A purple finger on the slope;
+A flippant fly upon the pane;
+A spider at his trade again;
+An added strut in chanticleer;
+A flower expected everywhere;
+An axe shrill singing in the woods;
+Fern-odors on untravelled roads, --
+All this, and more I cannot tell,
+A furtive look you know as well,
+And Nicodemus' mystery
+Receives its annual reply.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE SLEEPING FLOWERS.
+
+"Whose are the little beds," I asked,
+"Which in the valleys lie?"
+Some shook their heads, and others smiled,
+And no one made reply.
+
+"Perhaps they did not hear," I said;
+"I will inquire again.
+Whose are the beds, the tiny beds
+So thick upon the plain?"
+
+"'T is daisy in the shortest;
+A little farther on,
+Nearest the door to wake the first,
+Little leontodon.
+
+"'T is iris, sir, and aster,
+Anemone and bell,
+Batschia in the blanket red,
+And chubby daffodil."
+
+Meanwhile at many cradles
+Her busy foot she plied,
+Humming the quaintest lullaby
+That ever rocked a child.
+
+"Hush! Epigea wakens! --
+The crocus stirs her lids,
+Rhodora's cheek is crimson, --
+She's dreaming of the woods."
+
+Then, turning from them, reverent,
+"Their bed-time 't is," she said;
+"The bumble-bees will wake them
+When April woods are red."
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+MY ROSE.
+
+Pigmy seraphs gone astray,
+Velvet people from Vevay,
+Belles from some lost summer day,
+Bees' exclusive coterie.
+Paris could not lay the fold
+Belted down with emerald;
+Venice could not show a cheek
+Of a tint so lustrous meek.
+Never such an ambuscade
+As of brier and leaf displayed
+For my little damask maid.
+I had rather wear her grace
+Than an earl's distinguished face;
+I had rather dwell like her
+Than be Duke of Exeter
+Royalty enough for me
+To subdue the bumble-bee!
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+THE ORIOLE'S SECRET.
+
+To hear an oriole sing
+May be a common thing,
+Or only a divine.
+
+It is not of the bird
+Who sings the same, unheard,
+As unto crowd.
+
+The fashion of the ear
+Attireth that it hear
+In dun or fair.
+
+So whether it be rune,
+Or whether it be none,
+Is of within;
+
+The "tune is in the tree,"
+The sceptic showeth me;
+"No, sir! In thee!"
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE ORIOLE.
+
+One of the ones that Midas touched,
+Who failed to touch us all,
+Was that confiding prodigal,
+The blissful oriole.
+
+So drunk, he disavows it
+With badinage divine;
+So dazzling, we mistake him
+For an alighting mine.
+
+A pleader, a dissembler,
+An epicure, a thief, --
+Betimes an oratorio,
+An ecstasy in chief;
+
+The Jesuit of orchards,
+He cheats as he enchants
+Of an entire attar
+For his decamping wants.
+
+The splendor of a Burmah,
+The meteor of birds,
+Departing like a pageant
+Of ballads and of bards.
+
+I never thought that Jason sought
+For any golden fleece;
+But then I am a rural man,
+With thoughts that make for peace.
+
+But if there were a Jason,
+Tradition suffer me
+Behold his lost emolument
+Upon the apple-tree.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+IN SHADOW.
+
+I dreaded that first robin so,
+But he is mastered now,
+And I 'm accustomed to him grown, --
+He hurts a little, though.
+
+I thought if I could only live
+Till that first shout got by,
+Not all pianos in the woods
+Had power to mangle me.
+
+I dared not meet the daffodils,
+For fear their yellow gown
+Would pierce me with a fashion
+So foreign to my own.
+
+I wished the grass would hurry,
+So when 't was time to see,
+He 'd be too tall, the tallest one
+Could stretch to look at me.
+
+I could not bear the bees should come,
+I wished they 'd stay away
+In those dim countries where they go:
+What word had they for me?
+
+They 're here, though; not a creature failed,
+No blossom stayed away
+In gentle deference to me,
+The Queen of Calvary.
+
+Each one salutes me as he goes,
+And I my childish plumes
+Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment
+Of their unthinking drums.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE HUMMING-BIRD.
+
+A route of evanescence
+With a revolving wheel;
+A resonance of emerald,
+A rush of cochineal;
+And every blossom on the bush
+Adjusts its tumbled head, --
+The mail from Tunis, probably,
+An easy morning's ride.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+SECRETS.
+
+The skies can't keep their secret!
+They tell it to the hills --
+The hills just tell the orchards --
+And they the daffodils!
+
+A bird, by chance, that goes that way
+Soft overheard the whole.
+If I should bribe the little bird,
+Who knows but she would tell?
+
+I think I won't, however,
+It's finer not to know;
+If summer were an axiom,
+What sorcery had snow?
+
+So keep your secret, Father!
+I would not, if I could,
+Know what the sapphire fellows do,
+In your new-fashioned world!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+Who robbed the woods,
+The trusting woods?
+The unsuspecting trees
+Brought out their burrs and mosses
+His fantasy to please.
+He scanned their trinkets, curious,
+He grasped, he bore away.
+What will the solemn hemlock,
+What will the fir-tree say?
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+TWO VOYAGERS.
+
+Two butterflies went out at noon
+And waltzed above a stream,
+Then stepped straight through the firmament
+And rested on a beam;
+
+And then together bore away
+Upon a shining sea, --
+Though never yet, in any port,
+Their coming mentioned be.
+
+If spoken by the distant bird,
+If met in ether sea
+By frigate or by merchantman,
+Report was not to me.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+BY THE SEA.
+
+I started early, took my dog,
+And visited the sea;
+The mermaids in the basement
+Came out to look at me,
+
+And frigates in the upper floor
+Extended hempen hands,
+Presuming me to be a mouse
+Aground, upon the sands.
+
+But no man moved me till the tide
+Went past my simple shoe,
+And past my apron and my belt,
+And past my bodice too,
+
+And made as he would eat me up
+As wholly as a dew
+Upon a dandelion's sleeve --
+And then I started too.
+
+And he -- he followed close behind;
+I felt his silver heel
+Upon my ankle, -- then my shoes
+Would overflow with pearl.
+
+Until we met the solid town,
+No man he seemed to know;
+And bowing with a mighty look
+At me, the sea withdrew.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+OLD-FASHIONED.
+
+Arcturus is his other name, --
+I'd rather call him star!
+It's so unkind of science
+To go and interfere!
+
+I pull a flower from the woods, --
+A monster with a glass
+Computes the stamens in a breath,
+And has her in a class.
+
+Whereas I took the butterfly
+Aforetime in my hat,
+He sits erect in cabinets,
+The clover-bells forgot.
+
+What once was heaven, is zenith now.
+Where I proposed to go
+When time's brief masquerade was done,
+Is mapped, and charted too!
+
+What if the poles should frisk about
+And stand upon their heads!
+I hope I 'm ready for the worst,
+Whatever prank betides!
+
+Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven 's changed!
+I hope the children there
+Won't be new-fashioned when I come,
+And laugh at me, and stare!
+
+I hope the father in the skies
+Will lift his little girl, --
+Old-fashioned, naughty, everything, --
+Over the stile of pearl!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+A TEMPEST.
+
+An awful tempest mashed the air,
+The clouds were gaunt and few;
+A black, as of a spectre's cloak,
+Hid heaven and earth from view.
+
+The creatures chuckled on the roofs
+And whistled in the air,
+And shook their fists and gnashed their teeth.
+And swung their frenzied hair.
+
+The morning lit, the birds arose;
+The monster's faded eyes
+Turned slowly to his native coast,
+And peace was Paradise!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+THE SEA.
+
+An everywhere of silver,
+With ropes of sand
+To keep it from effacing
+The track called land.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+IN THE GARDEN.
+
+A bird came down the walk:
+He did not know I saw;
+He bit an angle-worm in halves
+And ate the fellow, raw.
+
+And then he drank a dew
+From a convenient grass,
+And then hopped sidewise to the wall
+To let a beetle pass.
+
+He glanced with rapid eyes
+That hurried all abroad, --
+They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
+He stirred his velvet head
+
+Like one in danger; cautious,
+I offered him a crumb,
+And he unrolled his feathers
+And rowed him softer home
+
+Than oars divide the ocean,
+Too silver for a seam,
+Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
+Leap, splashless, as they swim.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+THE SNAKE.
+
+A narrow fellow in the grass
+Occasionally rides;
+You may have met him, -- did you not,
+His notice sudden is.
+
+The grass divides as with a comb,
+A spotted shaft is seen;
+And then it closes at your feet
+And opens further on.
+
+He likes a boggy acre,
+A floor too cool for corn.
+Yet when a child, and barefoot,
+I more than once, at morn,
+
+Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
+Unbraiding in the sun, --
+When, stooping to secure it,
+It wrinkled, and was gone.
+
+Several of nature's people
+I know, and they know me;
+I feel for them a transport
+Of cordiality;
+
+But never met this fellow,
+Attended or alone,
+Without a tighter breathing,
+And zero at the bone.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+THE MUSHROOM.
+
+The mushroom is the elf of plants,
+At evening it is not;
+At morning in a truffled hut
+It stops upon a spot
+
+As if it tarried always;
+And yet its whole career
+Is shorter than a snake's delay,
+And fleeter than a tare.
+
+'T is vegetation's juggler,
+The germ of alibi;
+Doth like a bubble antedate,
+And like a bubble hie.
+
+I feel as if the grass were pleased
+To have it intermit;
+The surreptitious scion
+Of summer's circumspect.
+
+Had nature any outcast face,
+Could she a son contemn,
+Had nature an Iscariot,
+That mushroom, -- it is him.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+THE STORM.
+
+There came a wind like a bugle;
+It quivered through the grass,
+And a green chill upon the heat
+So ominous did pass
+We barred the windows and the doors
+As from an emerald ghost;
+The doom's electric moccason
+That very instant passed.
+On a strange mob of panting trees,
+And fences fled away,
+And rivers where the houses ran
+The living looked that day.
+The bell within the steeple wild
+The flying tidings whirled.
+How much can come
+And much can go,
+And yet abide the world!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+THE SPIDER.
+
+A spider sewed at night
+Without a light
+Upon an arc of white.
+If ruff it was of dame
+Or shroud of gnome,
+Himself, himself inform.
+Of immortality
+His strategy
+Was physiognomy.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+I know a place where summer strives
+With such a practised frost,
+She each year leads her daisies back,
+Recording briefly, "Lost."
+
+But when the south wind stirs the pools
+And struggles in the lanes,
+Her heart misgives her for her vow,
+And she pours soft refrains
+
+Into the lap of adamant,
+And spices, and the dew,
+That stiffens quietly to quartz,
+Upon her amber shoe.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+The one that could repeat the summer day
+Were greater than itself, though he
+Minutest of mankind might be.
+And who could reproduce the sun,
+At period of going down --
+The lingering and the stain, I mean --
+When Orient has been outgrown,
+And Occident becomes unknown,
+His name remain.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+THE WIND'S VISIT.
+
+The wind tapped like a tired man,
+And like a host, "Come in,"
+I boldly answered; entered then
+My residence within
+
+A rapid, footless guest,
+To offer whom a chair
+Were as impossible as hand
+A sofa to the air.
+
+No bone had he to bind him,
+His speech was like the push
+Of numerous humming-birds at once
+From a superior bush.
+
+His countenance a billow,
+His fingers, if he pass,
+Let go a music, as of tunes
+Blown tremulous in glass.
+
+He visited, still flitting;
+Then, like a timid man,
+Again he tapped -- 't was flurriedly --
+And I became alone.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+Nature rarer uses yellow
+   Than another hue;
+Saves she all of that for sunsets, --
+   Prodigal of blue,
+
+Spending scarlet like a woman,
+   Yellow she affords
+Only scantly and selectly,
+   Like a lover's words.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+GOSSIP.
+
+The leaves, like women, interchange
+  Sagacious confidence;
+Somewhat of nods, and somewhat of
+  Portentous inference,
+
+The parties in both cases
+  Enjoining secrecy, --
+Inviolable compact
+  To notoriety.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+SIMPLICITY.
+
+How happy is the little stone
+That rambles in the road alone,
+And doesn't care about careers,
+And exigencies never fears;
+Whose coat of elemental brown
+A passing universe put on;
+And independent as the sun,
+Associates or glows alone,
+Fulfilling absolute decree
+In casual simplicity.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+STORM.
+
+It sounded as if the streets were running,
+And then the streets stood still.
+Eclipse was all we could see at the window,
+And awe was all we could feel.
+
+By and by the boldest stole out of his covert,
+To see if time was there.
+Nature was in her beryl apron,
+Mixing fresher air.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+THE RAT.
+
+The rat is the concisest tenant.
+He pays no rent, --
+Repudiates the obligation,
+On schemes intent.
+
+Balking our wit
+To sound or circumvent,
+Hate cannot harm
+A foe so reticent.
+
+Neither decree
+Prohibits him,
+Lawful as
+Equilibrium.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+Frequently the woods are pink,
+Frequently are brown;
+Frequently the hills undress
+Behind my native town.
+
+Oft a head is crested
+I was wont to see,
+And as oft a cranny
+Where it used to be.
+
+And the earth, they tell me,
+On its axis turned, --
+Wonderful rotation
+By but twelve performed!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+A THUNDER-STORM.
+
+The wind begun to rock the grass
+With threatening tunes and low, --
+He flung a menace at the earth,
+A menace at the sky.
+
+The leaves unhooked themselves from trees
+And started all abroad;
+The dust did scoop itself like hands
+And throw away the road.
+
+The wagons quickened on the streets,
+The thunder hurried slow;
+The lightning showed a yellow beak,
+And then a livid claw.
+
+The birds put up the bars to nests,
+The cattle fled to barns;
+There came one drop of giant rain,
+And then, as if the hands
+
+That held the dams had parted hold,
+The waters wrecked the sky,
+But overlooked my father's house,
+Just quartering a tree.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+WITH FLOWERS.
+
+South winds jostle them,
+Bumblebees come,
+Hover, hesitate,
+Drink, and are gone.
+
+Butterflies pause
+On their passage Cashmere;
+I, softly plucking,
+Present them here!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+SUNSET.
+
+Where ships of purple gently toss
+On seas of daffodil,
+Fantastic sailors mingle,
+And then -- the wharf is still.
+
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+She sweeps with many-colored brooms,
+And leaves the shreds behind;
+Oh, housewife in the evening west,
+Come back, and dust the pond!
+
+You dropped a purple ravelling in,
+You dropped an amber thread;
+And now you 've littered all the East
+With duds of emerald!
+
+And still she plies her spotted brooms,
+And still the aprons fly,
+Till brooms fade softly into stars --
+And then I come away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+Like mighty footlights burned the red
+At bases of the trees, --
+The far theatricals of day
+Exhibiting to these.
+
+'T was universe that did applaud
+While, chiefest of the crowd,
+Enabled by his royal dress,
+Myself distinguished God.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+PROBLEMS.
+
+Bring me the sunset in a cup,
+Reckon the morning's flagons up,
+   And say how many dew;
+Tell me how far the morning leaps,
+Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
+   Who spun the breadths of blue!
+
+Write me how many notes there be
+In the new robin's ecstasy
+   Among astonished boughs;
+How many trips the tortoise makes,
+How many cups the bee partakes, --
+   The debauchee of dews!
+
+Also, who laid the rainbow's piers,
+Also, who leads the docile spheres
+   By withes of supple blue?
+Whose fingers string the stalactite,
+Who counts the wampum of the night,
+   To see that none is due?
+
+Who built this little Alban house
+And shut the windows down so close
+   My spirit cannot see?
+Who 'll let me out some gala day,
+With implements to fly away,
+   Passing pomposity?
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+THE JUGGLER OF DAY.
+
+Blazing in gold and quenching in purple,
+Leaping like leopards to the sky,
+Then at the feet of the old horizon
+Laying her spotted face, to die;
+
+Stooping as low as the otter's window,
+Touching the roof and tinting the barn,
+Kissing her bonnet to the meadow, --
+And the juggler of day is gone!
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+MY CRICKET.
+
+Farther in summer than the birds,
+Pathetic from the grass,
+A minor nation celebrates
+Its unobtrusive mass.
+
+No ordinance is seen,
+So gradual the grace,
+A pensive custom it becomes,
+Enlarging loneliness.
+
+Antiquest felt at noon
+When August, burning low,
+Calls forth this spectral canticle,
+Repose to typify.
+
+Remit as yet no grace,
+No furrow on the glow,
+Yet a druidic difference
+Enhances nature now.
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+As imperceptibly as grief
+The summer lapsed away, --
+Too imperceptible, at last,
+To seem like perfidy.
+
+A quietness distilled,
+As twilight long begun,
+Or Nature, spending with herself
+Sequestered afternoon.
+
+The dusk drew earlier in,
+The morning foreign shone, --
+A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
+As guest who would be gone.
+
+And thus, without a wing,
+Or service of a keel,
+Our summer made her light escape
+Into the beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+It can't be summer, -- that got through;
+It 's early yet for spring;
+There 's that long town of white to cross
+Before the blackbirds sing.
+
+It can't be dying, -- it's too rouge, --
+The dead shall go in white.
+So sunset shuts my question down
+With clasps of chrysolite.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+SUMMER'S OBSEQUIES.
+
+The gentian weaves her fringes,
+The maple's loom is red.
+My departing blossoms
+Obviate parade.
+
+A brief, but patient illness,
+An hour to prepare;
+And one, below this morning,
+Is where the angels are.
+
+It was a short procession, --
+The bobolink was there,
+An aged bee addressed us,
+And then we knelt in prayer.
+
+We trust that she was willing, --
+We ask that we may be.
+Summer, sister, seraph,
+Let us go with thee!
+
+In the name of the bee
+And of the butterfly
+And of the breeze, amen!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+FRINGED GENTIAN.
+
+God made a little gentian;
+It tried to be a rose
+And failed, and all the summer laughed.
+But just before the snows
+There came a purple creature
+That ravished all the hill;
+And summer hid her forehead,
+And mockery was still.
+The frosts were her condition;
+The Tyrian would not come
+Until the North evoked it.
+"Creator! shall I bloom?"
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+NOVEMBER.
+
+Besides the autumn poets sing,
+A few prosaic days
+A little this side of the snow
+And that side of the haze.
+
+A few incisive mornings,
+A few ascetic eyes, --
+Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod,
+And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.
+
+Still is the bustle in the brook,
+Sealed are the spicy valves;
+Mesmeric fingers softly touch
+The eyes of many elves.
+
+Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
+My sentiments to share.
+Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
+Thy windy will to bear!
+
+
+
+
+
+L.
+
+THE SNOW.
+
+It sifts from leaden sieves,
+It powders all the wood,
+It fills with alabaster wool
+The wrinkles of the road.
+
+It makes an even face
+Of mountain and of plain, --
+Unbroken forehead from the east
+Unto the east again.
+
+It reaches to the fence,
+It wraps it, rail by rail,
+Till it is lost in fleeces;
+It flings a crystal veil
+
+On stump and stack and stem, --
+The summer's empty room,
+Acres of seams where harvests were,
+Recordless, but for them.
+
+It ruffles wrists of posts,
+As ankles of a queen, --
+Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
+Denying they have been.
+
+
+
+
+
+LI.
+
+THE BLUE JAY.
+
+No brigadier throughout the year
+So civic as the jay.
+A neighbor and a warrior too,
+With shrill felicity
+
+Pursuing winds that censure us
+A February day,
+The brother of the universe
+Was never blown away.
+
+The snow and he are intimate;
+I 've often seen them play
+When heaven looked upon us all
+With such severity,
+
+I felt apology were due
+To an insulted sky,
+Whose pompous frown was nutriment
+To their temerity.
+
+The pillow of this daring head
+Is pungent evergreens;
+His larder -- terse and militant --
+Unknown, refreshing things;
+
+His character a tonic,
+His future a dispute;
+Unfair an immortality
+That leaves this neighbor out.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.
+
+
+I.
+
+Let down the bars, O Death!
+The tired flocks come in
+Whose bleating ceases to repeat,
+Whose wandering is done.
+
+Thine is the stillest night,
+Thine the securest fold;
+Too near thou art for seeking thee,
+Too tender to be told.
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Going to heaven!
+I don't know when,
+Pray do not ask me how, --
+Indeed, I 'm too astonished
+To think of answering you!
+Going to heaven! --
+How dim it sounds!
+And yet it will be done
+As sure as flocks go home at night
+Unto the shepherd's arm!
+
+Perhaps you 're going too!
+Who knows?
+If you should get there first,
+Save just a little place for me
+Close to the two I lost!
+
+The smallest "robe" will fit me,
+And just a bit of "crown;"
+For you know we do not mind our dress
+When we are going home.
+
+I 'm glad I don't believe it,
+For it would stop my breath,
+And I 'd like to look a little more
+At such a curious earth!
+I am glad they did believe it
+Whom I have never found
+Since the mighty autumn afternoon
+I left them in the ground.
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+At least to pray is left, is left.
+O Jesus! in the air
+I know not which thy chamber is, --
+I 'm knocking everywhere.
+
+Thou stirrest earthquake in the South,
+And maelstrom in the sea;
+Say, Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
+Hast thou no arm for me?
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+EPITAPH.
+
+Step lightly on this narrow spot!
+The broadest land that grows
+Is not so ample as the breast
+These emerald seams enclose.
+
+Step lofty; for this name is told
+As far as cannon dwell,
+Or flag subsist, or fame export
+Her deathless syllable.
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Morns like these we parted;
+Noons like these she rose,
+Fluttering first, then firmer,
+To her fair repose.
+
+Never did she lisp it,
+And 't was not for me;
+She was mute from transport,
+I, from agony!
+
+Till the evening, nearing,
+One the shutters drew --
+Quick! a sharper rustling!
+And this linnet flew!
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A death-blow is a life-blow to some
+Who, till they died, did not alive become;
+Who, had they lived, had died, but when
+They died, vitality begun.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+I read my sentence steadily,
+Reviewed it with my eyes,
+To see that I made no mistake
+In its extremest clause, --
+
+The date, and manner of the shame;
+And then the pious form
+That "God have mercy" on the soul
+The jury voted him.
+
+I made my soul familiar
+With her extremity,
+That at the last it should not be
+A novel agony,
+
+But she and Death, acquainted,
+Meet tranquilly as friends,
+Salute and pass without a hint --
+And there the matter ends.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+I have not told my garden yet,
+Lest that should conquer me;
+I have not quite the strength now
+To break it to the bee.
+
+I will not name it in the street,
+For shops would stare, that I,
+So shy, so very ignorant,
+Should have the face to die.
+
+The hillsides must not know it,
+Where I have rambled so,
+Nor tell the loving forests
+The day that I shall go,
+
+Nor lisp it at the table,
+Nor heedless by the way
+Hint that within the riddle
+One will walk to-day!
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE BATTLE-FIELD.
+
+They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
+   Like petals from a rose,
+When suddenly across the June
+   A wind with fingers goes.
+
+They perished in the seamless grass, --
+   No eye could find the place;
+But God on his repealless list
+   Can summon every face.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+The only ghost I ever saw
+Was dressed in mechlin, -- so;
+He wore no sandal on his foot,
+And stepped like flakes of snow.
+His gait was soundless, like the bird,
+But rapid, like the roe;
+His fashions quaint, mosaic,
+Or, haply, mistletoe.
+
+His conversation seldom,
+His laughter like the breeze
+That dies away in dimples
+Among the pensive trees.
+Our interview was transient,--
+Of me, himself was shy;
+And God forbid I look behind
+Since that appalling day!
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+Some, too fragile for winter winds,
+The thoughtful grave encloses, --
+Tenderly tucking them in from frost
+Before their feet are cold.
+
+Never the treasures in her nest
+The cautious grave exposes,
+Building where schoolboy dare not look
+And sportsman is not bold.
+
+This covert have all the children
+Early aged, and often cold, --
+Sparrows unnoticed by the Father;
+Lambs for whom time had not a fold.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+As by the dead we love to sit,
+Become so wondrous dear,
+As for the lost we grapple,
+Though all the rest are here, --
+
+In broken mathematics
+We estimate our prize,
+Vast, in its fading ratio,
+To our penurious eyes!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+MEMORIALS.
+
+Death sets a thing significant
+The eye had hurried by,
+Except a perished creature
+Entreat us tenderly
+
+To ponder little workmanships
+In crayon or in wool,
+With "This was last her fingers did,"
+Industrious until
+
+The thimble weighed too heavy,
+The stitches stopped themselves,
+And then 't was put among the dust
+Upon the closet shelves.
+
+A book I have, a friend gave,
+Whose pencil, here and there,
+Had notched the place that pleased him, --
+At rest his fingers are.
+
+Now, when I read, I read not,
+For interrupting tears
+Obliterate the etchings
+Too costly for repairs.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+I went to heaven, --
+'T was a small town,
+Lit with a ruby,
+Lathed with down.
+Stiller than the fields
+At the full dew,
+Beautiful as pictures
+No man drew.
+People like the moth,
+Of mechlin, frames,
+Duties of gossamer,
+And eider names.
+Almost contented
+I could be
+'Mong such unique
+Society.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+Their height in heaven comforts not,
+Their glory nought to me;
+'T was best imperfect, as it was;
+I 'm finite, I can't see.
+
+The house of supposition,
+The glimmering frontier
+That skirts the acres of perhaps,
+To me shows insecure.
+
+The wealth I had contented me;
+If 't was a meaner size,
+Then I had counted it until
+It pleased my narrow eyes
+
+Better than larger values,
+However true their show;
+This timid life of evidence
+Keeps pleading, "I don't know."
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+There is a shame of nobleness
+Confronting sudden pelf, --
+A finer shame of ecstasy
+Convicted of itself.
+
+A best disgrace a brave man feels,
+Acknowledged of the brave, --
+One more "Ye Blessed" to be told;
+But this involves the grave.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+TRIUMPH.
+
+Triumph may be of several kinds.
+There 's triumph in the room
+When that old imperator, Death,
+By faith is overcome.
+
+There 's triumph of the finer mind
+When truth, affronted long,
+Advances calm to her supreme,
+Her God her only throng.
+
+A triumph when temptation's bribe
+Is slowly handed back,
+One eye upon the heaven renounced
+And one upon the rack.
+
+Severer triumph, by himself
+Experienced, who can pass
+Acquitted from that naked bar,
+Jehovah's countenance!
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+Pompless no life can pass away;
+    The lowliest career
+To the same pageant wends its way
+    As that exalted here.
+How cordial is the mystery!
+    The hospitable pall
+A "this way" beckons spaciously, --
+    A miracle for all!
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+I noticed people disappeared,
+When but a little child, --
+Supposed they visited remote,
+Or settled regions wild.
+
+Now know I they both visited
+And settled regions wild,
+But did because they died, -- a fact
+Withheld the little child!
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+FOLLOWING.
+
+I had no cause to be awake,
+My best was gone to sleep,
+And morn a new politeness took,
+And failed to wake them up,
+
+But called the others clear,
+And passed their curtains by.
+Sweet morning, when I over-sleep,
+Knock, recollect, for me!
+
+I looked at sunrise once,
+And then I looked at them,
+And wishfulness in me arose
+For circumstance the same.
+
+'T was such an ample peace,
+It could not hold a sigh, --
+'T was Sabbath with the bells divorced,
+'T was sunset all the day.
+
+So choosing but a gown
+And taking but a prayer,
+The only raiment I should need,
+I struggled, and was there.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+If anybody's friend be dead,
+It 's sharpest of the theme
+The thinking how they walked alive,
+At such and such a time.
+
+Their costume, of a Sunday,
+Some manner of the hair, --
+A prank nobody knew but them,
+Lost, in the sepulchre.
+
+How warm they were on such a day:
+You almost feel the date,
+So short way off it seems; and now,
+They 're centuries from that.
+
+How pleased they were at what you said;
+You try to touch the smile,
+And dip your fingers in the frost:
+When was it, can you tell,
+
+You asked the company to tea,
+Acquaintance, just a few,
+And chatted close with this grand thing
+That don't remember you?
+
+Past bows and invitations,
+Past interview, and vow,
+Past what ourselves can estimate, --
+That makes the quick of woe!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+THE JOURNEY.
+
+Our journey had advanced;
+Our feet were almost come
+To that odd fork in Being's road,
+Eternity by term.
+
+Our pace took sudden awe,
+Our feet reluctant led.
+Before were cities, but between,
+The forest of the dead.
+
+Retreat was out of hope, --
+Behind, a sealed route,
+Eternity's white flag before,
+And God at every gate.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+A COUNTRY BURIAL.
+
+Ample make this bed.
+Make this bed with awe;
+In it wait till judgment break
+Excellent and fair.
+
+Be its mattress straight,
+Be its pillow round;
+Let no sunrise' yellow noise
+Interrupt this ground.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+GOING.
+
+On such a night, or such a night,
+Would anybody care
+If such a little figure
+Slipped quiet from its chair,
+
+So quiet, oh, how quiet!
+That nobody might know
+But that the little figure
+Rocked softer, to and fro?
+
+On such a dawn, or such a dawn,
+Would anybody sigh
+That such a little figure
+Too sound asleep did lie
+
+For chanticleer to wake it, --
+Or stirring house below,
+Or giddy bird in orchard,
+Or early task to do?
+
+There was a little figure plump
+For every little knoll,
+Busy needles, and spools of thread,
+And trudging feet from school.
+
+Playmates, and holidays, and nuts,
+And visions vast and small.
+Strange that the feet so precious charged
+Should reach so small a goal!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+Essential oils are wrung:
+The attar from the rose
+Is not expressed by suns alone,
+It is the gift of screws.
+
+The general rose decays;
+But this, in lady's drawer,
+Makes summer when the lady lies
+In ceaseless rosemary.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+I lived on dread; to those who know
+The stimulus there is
+In danger, other impetus
+Is numb and vital-less.
+
+As 't were a spur upon the soul,
+A fear will urge it where
+To go without the spectre's aid
+Were challenging despair.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+If I should die,
+And you should live,
+And time should gurgle on,
+And morn should beam,
+And noon should burn,
+As it has usual done;
+If birds should build as early,
+And bees as bustling go, --
+One might depart at option
+From enterprise below!
+'T is sweet to know that stocks will stand
+When we with daisies lie,
+That commerce will continue,
+And trades as briskly fly.
+It makes the parting tranquil
+And keeps the soul serene,
+That gentlemen so sprightly
+Conduct the pleasing scene!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+AT LENGTH.
+
+Her final summer was it,
+And yet we guessed it not;
+If tenderer industriousness
+Pervaded her, we thought
+
+A further force of life
+Developed from within, --
+When Death lit all the shortness up,
+And made the hurry plain.
+
+We wondered at our blindness, --
+When nothing was to see
+But her Carrara guide-post, --
+At our stupidity,
+
+When, duller than our dullness,
+The busy darling lay,
+So busy was she, finishing,
+So leisurely were we!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+GHOSTS.
+
+One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
+One need not be a house;
+The brain has corridors surpassing
+Material place.
+
+Far safer, of a midnight meeting
+External ghost,
+Than an interior confronting
+That whiter host.
+
+Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
+The stones achase,
+Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
+In lonesome place.
+
+Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
+Should startle most;
+Assassin, hid in our apartment,
+Be horror's least.
+
+The prudent carries a revolver,
+He bolts the door,
+O'erlooking a superior spectre
+More near.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+VANISHED.
+
+She died, -- this was the way she died;
+And when her breath was done,
+Took up her simple wardrobe
+And started for the sun.
+
+Her little figure at the gate
+The angels must have spied,
+Since I could never find her
+Upon the mortal side.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+PRECEDENCE.
+
+Wait till the majesty of Death
+Invests so mean a brow!
+Almost a powdered footman
+Might dare to touch it now!
+
+Wait till in everlasting robes
+This democrat is dressed,
+Then prate about "preferment"
+And "station" and the rest!
+
+Around this quiet courtier
+Obsequious angels wait!
+Full royal is his retinue,
+Full purple is his state!
+
+A lord might dare to lift the hat
+To such a modest clay,
+Since that my Lord, "the Lord of lords"
+Receives unblushingly!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+GONE.
+
+Went up a year this evening!
+I recollect it well!
+Amid no bells nor bravos
+The bystanders will tell!
+Cheerful, as to the village,
+Tranquil, as to repose,
+Chastened, as to the chapel,
+This humble tourist rose.
+Did not talk of returning,
+Alluded to no time
+When, were the gales propitious,
+We might look for him;
+Was grateful for the roses
+In life's diverse bouquet,
+Talked softly of new species
+To pick another day.
+
+Beguiling thus the wonder,
+The wondrous nearer drew;
+Hands bustled at the moorings --
+The crowd respectful grew.
+Ascended from our vision
+To countenances new!
+A difference, a daisy,
+Is all the rest I knew!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+REQUIEM.
+
+Taken from men this morning,
+Carried by men to-day,
+Met by the gods with banners
+Who marshalled her away.
+
+One little maid from playmates,
+One little mind from school, --
+There must be guests in Eden;
+All the rooms are full.
+
+Far as the east from even,
+Dim as the border star, --
+Courtiers quaint, in kingdoms,
+Our departed are.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+What inn is this
+Where for the night
+Peculiar traveller comes?
+Who is the landlord?
+Where the maids?
+Behold, what curious rooms!
+No ruddy fires on the hearth,
+No brimming tankards flow.
+Necromancer, landlord,
+Who are these below?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+It was not death, for I stood up,
+And all the dead lie down;
+It was not night, for all the bells
+Put out their tongues, for noon.
+
+It was not frost, for on my flesh
+I felt siroccos crawl, --
+Nor fire, for just my marble feet
+Could keep a chancel cool.
+
+And yet it tasted like them all;
+The figures I have seen
+Set orderly, for burial,
+Reminded me of mine,
+
+As if my life were shaven
+And fitted to a frame,
+And could not breathe without a key;
+And 't was like midnight, some,
+
+When everything that ticked has stopped,
+And space stares, all around,
+Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
+Repeal the beating ground.
+
+But most like chaos, -- stopless, cool, --
+Without a chance or spar,
+Or even a report of land
+To justify despair.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+TILL THE END.
+
+I should not dare to leave my friend,
+Because -- because if he should die
+While I was gone, and I -- too late --
+Should reach the heart that wanted me;
+
+If I should disappoint the eyes
+That hunted, hunted so, to see,
+And could not bear to shut until
+They "noticed" me -- they noticed me;
+
+If I should stab the patient faith
+So sure I 'd come -- so sure I 'd come,
+It listening, listening, went to sleep
+Telling my tardy name, --
+
+My heart would wish it broke before,
+Since breaking then, since breaking then,
+Were useless as next morning's sun,
+Where midnight frosts had lain!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+VOID.
+
+Great streets of silence led away
+To neighborhoods of pause;
+Here was no notice, no dissent,
+No universe, no laws.
+
+By clocks 't was morning, and for night
+The bells at distance called;
+But epoch had no basis here,
+For period exhaled.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+A throe upon the features
+A hurry in the breath,
+An ecstasy of parting
+Denominated "Death," --
+
+An anguish at the mention,
+Which, when to patience grown,
+I 've known permission given
+To rejoin its own.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+SAVED!
+
+Of tribulation these are they
+Denoted by the white;
+The spangled gowns, a lesser rank
+Of victors designate.
+
+All these did conquer; but the ones
+Who overcame most times
+Wear nothing commoner than snow,
+No ornament but palms.
+
+Surrender is a sort unknown
+On this superior soil;
+Defeat, an outgrown anguish,
+Remembered as the mile
+
+Our panting ankle barely gained
+When night devoured the road;
+But we stood whispering in the house,
+And all we said was "Saved"!
+
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+I think just how my shape will rise
+When I shall be forgiven,
+Till hair and eyes and timid head
+Are out of sight, in heaven.
+
+I think just how my lips will weigh
+With shapeless, quivering prayer
+That you, so late, consider me,
+The sparrow of your care.
+
+I mind me that of anguish sent,
+Some drifts were moved away
+Before my simple bosom broke, --
+And why not this, if they?
+
+And so, until delirious borne
+I con that thing, -- "forgiven," --
+Till with long fright and longer trust
+I drop my heart, unshriven!
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+THE FORGOTTEN GRAVE.
+
+After a hundred years
+Nobody knows the place, --
+Agony, that enacted there,
+Motionless as peace.
+
+Weeds triumphant ranged,
+Strangers strolled and spelled
+At the lone orthography
+Of the elder dead.
+
+Winds of summer fields
+Recollect the way, --
+Instinct picking up the key
+Dropped by memory.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+Lay this laurel on the one
+Too intrinsic for renown.
+Laurel! veil your deathless tree, --
+Him you chasten, that is he!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+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 Project Gutenberg's Poems: Three Series, Complete, by Emily Dickinson
+
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