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, plashless, 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 WlND’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 does n’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 dulness,
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.