1351


You cannot take itself
From any Human soul -
That indestructible estate
Enable him to dwell -
Impregnable as Light
That every man behold
But take away as difficult
As undiscovered Gold -

C. 1875 1945


1352


To his simplicity
To die - was little Fate -
If Duty live - contented
But her Confederate.

C. 1876 1931


1353


The last of Summer is Delight -
Deterred by Retrospect.
'Tis Ecstasy's revealed Review -
Enchantment's Syndicate.

To meet it - nameless as it is -
Without celestial Mail -
Audacious as without a Knock
To walk within the Veil.

C. 1876 1929


1354


The Heart is the Capital of the Mind -
The Mind is a single State -
The Heart and the Mind together make
A single Continent -

One - is the Population -
Numerous enough -
This ecstatic Nation
Seek - it is Yourself.

C. 1876 1929


1355


The Mind lives on the Heart
Like any Parasite -
If that is full of Meat
The Mind is fat.

But if the Heart omit
Emaciate the Wit -
The Aliment of it
So absolute.

C. 1876 1932


1356


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 prohibit him -
Lawful as Equilibrium

C. 1876 1891


1357


"Faithful to the end" Amended
From the Heavenly Clause -
Constancy with a Proviso
Constancy abhors -

Crowns of Life" are servile Prizes
To the stately Heart,
Given for the Giving, solely,
No Emolument.

Version I
C. 1876 1932


"Faithful to the end" Amended
From the Heavenly clause -
Lucrative indeed the offer
But the Heart withdraws -

"I will give" the base Proviso -
Spare Your "Crown of Life" -
Those it fits, too fair to wear It -
Try it on Yourself-

Version II
c. 1876 1945


1358


The Treason of an accent
Might Ecstasy transfer -
Of her effacing Fathom
Is no Recoverer -

Version I
C. 1876 1931


The Treason of an Accent
Might vilify the Joy -
To breathe - corrode the rapture
Of Sanctity to be -

Version II
C. 1876 1914


1359


The long sigh of the Frog
Upon a Summer's Day
Enacts intoxication
Upon the Revery -
But his receding Swell
Substantiates a Peace
That makes the Ear inordinate
For corporal release -

C. 1876 1914


1360


I sued the News - yet feared - the News
That such a Realm could be -
"The House not made with Hands" it was -
Thrown open wide to me -

C. 1876 1931


1361


The Flake the Wind exasperate
More eloquently he
Than if escorted to lts Down
By Ann of Chivalry.

C. 1876 1931


1362


Of their peculiar light
I keep one ray
To clarify the Sight
To seek them by -

C. 1876 1931


1363


Summer laid her simple Hat
On its boundless Shelf -
Unobserved - a Ribbon slipt,
Snatch it for yourself.

Summer laid her supple Glove
In its sylvan Drawer -
Wheresoe'er, or was she -
The demand of Awe?

C. 1876 1947


1364


How know it from a Summer's Day?
Its Fervors are as firm-
And nothing in the Countenance
But scintillates the same-
Yet Birds examine it and Bee-
And Vans without a name
Inspect the Admonition
And sunder as they came -

C. 1876 1955


1365


Take all away -
The only thing worth larceny
is left - the Immortality

C. 1876 1891


1366A


Brother of Ingots - Ah Peru -
Empty the Hearts that purchased you -

C. 1876 1945


1366B


Sister of Ophir -
Ah, Peru -
Subtle the Sum
That purchase you -

C. 1878 1932


1366C


Brother of Ophir
Bnght Adieu,
Honor, the shortest route
To you.

C. 1880 1894


1367


"Tomorrow" - whose location
The Wise deceives
Though its hallucination
Is last that leaves -
Tomorrow - thou Retriever
Of every tare -
Of Alibi art thou
Or ownest where?

C. 1876 1951


1368


Love's stricken "why"
Is all that love can speak-
Built of but just a syllable
The hugest hearts that break.

C. 1876 1894


1369


Trusty as the stars
Who quit their shining working
Prompt as when I lit them
In Genesis' new house,
Durable as dawn
Whose antiquated blossom
Makes a world's suspense
Perish and rejoice.

C. 1876 1894


1370


Gathered into the Earth,
And out of story -
Gathered to that strange Fame -
That lonesome Glory
That hath no omen here - but Awe -

C. 1876 1945


1371


How fits his Umber Coat
The Tailor of the Nut?
Combined without a seam
Like Raiment of a Dream -

Who spun the Auburn Cloth?
Computed how the girth?
The Chestnut aged grows
In those primeval Clothes -

We know that we are wise -
Accomplished in Surprise -
Yet by this Countryman -
This nature - how undone!

C. 1876 1945


1372


The Sun is one - and on the Tare
He doth as punctual call
As on the conscientious Flower
And estimates them all -

C. 1876 1945


1373


The worthlessness of Earthly things
The Ditty is that Nature Sings -
And then - enforces their delight
Till Synods are inordinate-

C. 1876 1945


1374


A Saucer holds a Cup
In sordid human Life
But in a Squirrel's estimate
A Saucer hold a Loaf.

A Table of a Tree
Demands the little King
And every Breeze that run along
His Dining Room do swing.

His Cutlery - he keeps
Within his Russet Lips -
To see it flashing when he dines
Do Birmingham eclipse -

Convicted - could we be
Of our Minutiae
The smallest Citizen that flies
Is heartier than we -

C. 1876 1945


1375


Death warrants are supposed to be
An enginery of equity
A merciful mistake
A pencil in an Idol's Hand
A Devotee has oft consigned
To Crucifix or Block

C. 1876 1945


1376


Dreams are the subtle Dower
That make us rich an Hour-
Then fling us poor
Out of the purple Door
Into the Precinct raw
Possessed before -

.
C. 1876 1945


1377


Forbidden Fruit a flavor has
That lawful Orchards mocks-
How luscious lies within the Pod
The Pea that Duty locks -

C. 1876 1896


1378


His Heart was darker than the starless night
For that there is a morn
But in this black Receptacle
Can be no Bode of Dawn

C. 1876 1945


1379


His Mansion in the Pool
The Frog forsakes -
He rises on a Log
And statements makes -
His Auditors two Worlds
Deducting me -
The Orator of April 1
Is hoarse Today-
His Mittens at his Feet
No Hand hath he-
His eloquence a Bubble
As Fame should be-
Applaud him to discover
To your chagrin
Demosthenes has vanished
In Waters Green -

1876 1945


1380


How much the present moment means
To those who've nothing more -
The Fop - the Carp - the Atheist -
Stake an entire store
Upon a Moment's shallow Run
While their commuted Feet
The Torrents of Eternity
Do all but inundate -

C. 1876 1945


1381


I suppose the time will come
Aid it in the coming
When the Bird will crowd the Tree
And the Bee be booming.

I suppose the time will come
Hinder it a little
When the Corn in Silk will dress
And in Chintz the Apple

I believe the Day will be
When the Jay will giggle
At his new white House the Earth
That, too, halt a little -

C. 1876 1945


1382


In many and reportless places
We feel a Joy -
Reportless, also, but sincere as Nature
Or Deity -

It comes, without a consternation -
Dissolves - the same -
But leaves a sumptuous Destitution -
without a Name -

Profane it by a search - we cannot
It has no home -
Nor we who having once inhaled it -
Thereafter roam.

C. 1876 1945


1383


Long Years apart - can make no
Breach a second cannot fill-
The absence of the Witch does not
Invalidate the spell-

The embers of a Thousand Years
Uncovered by the Hand
That fondled them when they were Fire
Will stir and understand -

C. 1876 1945


1384


Praise it - 'tis dead -
It cannot glow -
Warm this inclement Ear
With the encomium it earned
Since it was gathered here -
Invest this alabaster Zest
In the Delights of Dust -
Remitted - since it flItted it
In recusance august.

C. 1876 1945


1385


"Secrets" is a dally word
Yet does not exist -
Muffled - it remits surmise -
Murmured - It has ceased -
Dungeoned In the Human Breast
Doubtless secrets lie -
But that Grate inviolate -
Goes nor comes away
Nothing with a Tongue or Ear -
Secrets stapled there
Will emerge but once - and dumb -
To the Sepulchre -

C. 1879 1945


1386


Summer - we all have seen -
A few of us - believed -
A few - the more aspiring
Unquestionably loved -

But Summer does not care -
She goes her spacious way
As eligible as the moon
To our Temerity -

The Doom to be adored -
The Affluence conferred -
Unknown as to an Ecstasy
The Embryo endowed -

C. 1876 1945


1387


The Butterfly's Numidian Gown
With spots of Burnish roasted on
Is proof against the Sun
Yet prone to shut its spotted Fan
And panting on a Clover lean
As if it were undone -

C. 1876 1945


1388


Those Cattle smaller than a Bee
That herd upon the eye -
Whose Tillage is the passing Crumb -
Those Cattle are the Fly -
Of Barns for Winter - blameless -
Extemporaneous stalls
They found to our objection -
On eligible walls -
Reserving the presumption
To suddenly descend
And gallop on the Furniture -
Or odiouser offend -
Of their peculiar calling
Unqualified to judge
To Nature we remand them
To justify or scourge -

C. 1876 1945


1389


Touch lightly Nature's sweet Guitar
Unless thou know'st the Tune
Or every Bird will point at thee
Because a Bard too soon -

C. 1876 1945


1390


These held their Wick above the West -
Till when the Red declined -
Or how the Amber aided it -
Defied to be defined -

Then waned without disparagement
In a dissembling Hue
That would not let the Eye decide
Did it abide or no -

C. 1877 1951


1391


They might not need me - yet they might -
I'll let my Heart be just in sight -
A smile so small as mine might be
Precisely their necessity -

C. 1877 1894


1392


Hope is a strange invention-
A Patent of the Heart-
In unremittlng action
Yet never wearing out-

Of this electric Adjunct
Not anything is known
But its unique momentum
Embellish all we own -

C. 1877 1931


1393


Lay this Laurel on the One
Too intrinsic for Renown-
Laurel - veil your deathless tree-
Him you chasten, that is He!

C. 1877 1891


1394


Whose Pink career may have a close
Portentous as our own, who knows?
To imitate these NeIghbors fleet
In awe and innocence, were meet.

C. 1877 1894


1395


After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside -
Nature Imparts the little Blue-Bird - assured
Her conscientious Voice will soar unmoved
Above ostensible Vicissitude.

First at the March - competing with the Wind -
Her panting note exalts us - like a friend -
Last to adhere when Summer cleaves away -
Elegy of Integrity.

C. 1877 1932


1396


She laid her docile Crescent down
And this confiding 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 -

C. 1877 1896


1397


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 an Opal Apron,
Mixing fresher Air.

C. 1877 189I


1398


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 -


C. 1877 I891


1399


Perhaps they do not go so far
As we who stay, suppose -
Perhaps come closer, for the lapse
Of their corporeal clothes -

It may be know so certainly
How short we have to fear
That comprehension antedates
And estimates us there -

C. 1877 1947


1400


What mystery pervades a well!
That water lives so far -
A neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar

Whose limit none have ever seen,
But just his lid of glass -
Like looking every time you please
In an abyss's face!

The grass does not appear afraid,
I often wonder he
Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is awe to me.

Related somehow they may be,
The sedge stands next the sea -
Where he is floorless
And does no timidity betray

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.

C. 1877 1896


1401


To own a Susan of my own
Is of itself a Bliss -
Whatever Realm I forfeit, Lord,
Continue me in this!

C. 1877 1932


1402


To the stanch Dust
We safe commit thee -
Tongue If it hath,
Inviolate to thee -
Silence - denote -
And Sanctity - enforce thee -
Passenger - of Infinity -

C. 1877 1914


1403


My Maker - let me be
Enamored most of thee-
But nearer this
I more should miss -

C. 1877 1915


1404


March is the Month of Expectation.
The things we do not know-
The Persons of prognostication
Are coming now -
We try to show becoming firmness -
But pompous Joy
Betrays us, as his first Betrothal
Betrays a Boy.

C. 1877 1914


1405


Bees are Black, with Gilt Surcingles-
Buccaneers of Buzz.
Ride abroad in ostentation
And subsist on Fuzz.

Fuzz ordained - not Fuzz contingent-
Marrows of the Hill.
Jugs - a Universe's fracture
Could not jar or spill.

C. 1877 1945


1406


No Passenger was known to flee -
That lodged a night in memory -
That wily - subterranean Inn
Contrives that none go out again -

C. 1877 1945


1407


A Field of Stubble, lying sere
Beneath the second Sun -
Its Toils to Brindled People thrust -
Its Triumphs - to the Bin -
Accosted by a timid Bird
Irresolute of Alms -
Is often seen - but seldom felt,
On our New England Farms -

C. 1877 1932


1408


The Fact that Earth is Heaven -
Whether Heaven is Heaven or not
If not an Affidavit
Of that specific Spot
Not only must confirm us
That it is not for us
But that it would affront us
To dwell in such a place -

C. 1877 1945


1409


Could mortal lip divine
The undeveloped Freight
Of a delivered syllable
'Twould crumble with the weight.

C. 1877 1894


1410


I shall not murmur if at last
The ones I loved below
Permission have to understand
For what I shunned them so -
Divulging it would rest my Heart
But it would ravage theirs -
Why, Katie, Treason has a Voice -
But mine - dispels - in Tears.

C. 1877 1945


1411


Of Paradise' existence
All we know
Is the uncertain certainty -
But its vicinity infer,
By its Bisecting
Messenger-

C. 1877 1945


1412


Shame is the shawl of Pink
In which we wrap the Soul
To keep it from infesting Eyes -
The elemental Veil
Which helpless Nature drops
When pushed upon a scene
Repugnant to her probity -
Shame is the tint divine.

C. 1877 1945


1413


Sweet Skepticism of the Heart -
That knows - and does not know -
And tosses like a Fleet of Balm -
Affronted by the snow -
Invites and then retards the Truth
Lest Certainty be sere
Compared with the delicious throe
Of transport thrilled with Fear -

C. 1877 1945


1414


Unworthy of her Breast
Though by that scathing test
What Soul survive?
By her exacting light
How counterfeit the white
We chiefly have!

C. 1877 1945


1415


A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds
That threatened it - did run
And crouched behind his Yellow Door
Was the defiant sun -
Some conflict with those upper friends
So genial in the main
That we deplore peculiarly
Their arrogant campaign -

C. 1877 1945


1416


Crisis is sweet and yet the Heart
Upon the hither side
Has Dowers of Prospective
To Denizens denied

Inquire of the closing Rose
Which rapture she preferred
And she will point you sighing
To her rescinded Bud.

c. 1877 1914


1417


How Human Nature dotes
On what it can't detect.
The moment that a Plot is plumbed
Prospective is extinct-

Prospective is the friend
Reserved for us to know
When Constancy is clarified
Of Curiosity -

Of subjects that resist
Redoubtablest is this
Where go we -
Go we anywhere
Creation after this?

C. 1877 1945


1418


How lonesome the Wind must feel Nights -
When people have put out the Lights
And everything that has an Inn
Closes the shutter and goes in-

How pompous the Wind must feel Noons
Stepping to incorporeal Tunes
Correcting errors of the sky
And clarifying scenery

How mighty the Wind must feel Morns
Encamping on a thousand dawns
Espousing each and spurning all
Then soaring to his Temple Tall-

C. 1877 1945


1419


It was a quiet seeming Day -
There was no harm in earth or sky -
Till with the closing sun
There strayed an accidental Red
A Strolling Hue, one would have said
To westward of the Town

But when the Earth began to jar
And Houses vanished with a roar
And Human Nature hid
We comprehended by the Awe
As those that Dlssolution saw
The Poppy in the Cloud

C. 1877 1945


1420


One Joy of so much anguish
Sweet nature has for me
I shun it as I do Despair
Or dear iniquity-
Why Birds, a Summer morning
Before the Quick of Day
Should stab my ravished Splrit
With Dirks of Melody
Is part of an inquiry
That wlll receive reply
When Flesh and Spirit sunder
In Death's Immediately-

C. 1877 1945


1421


Such are the inlets of the mind -
His outlets - would you see
Ascend with me the eminence
Of immortality -

C. 1877 1945


1422


Summer has two Beginnings -
Beginning once in June -
Beginning in October
Affectingly again -

Without, perhaps, the Riot
But graphicker for Grace -
As finer is a going
Than a remaining Face -

Departing then - forever -
Forever - until May -
Forever is deciduous -
Except to those who die -

C. 1877 1945


1423


The fairest Home I ever knew
Was founded in an Hour
By Parties also that I knew
A spider and a Flower -
A manse of mechlin and of Floss -

C. 1877 1945


1424


The Gentian has a parched Corolla -
Like azure dried
'Tis Nature's buoyant juices
Beatified -
Without a vaunt or sheen
As casual as Rain
And as benign -

When most is past - it comes -
Nor isolate it seems
Its Bond its Friend -
To fill its Fringed career
And aid an aged Year
Abundant end -

Its lot - were it forgot -
This Truth endear -
Fidelity is gain
Creation o'er

C. 1877 1945


1425


The inundation of the Spring
Enlarges every soul -
It sweeps the tenement away
But leaves the Water whole -

In which the soul at first estranged -
Seeks faintly for its shore
But acclimated - pines no more
For that Peninsula -

C. 1877 1914


1426


The pretty Rain from those sweet Eaves
Her unintending Eyes -
Took her own Heart, including ours,
By innocent Surprise -

The wrestle in her simple Throat
To hold the feeling down
That vanquished her - defeated Feat -
Was Fervor's sudden Crown -

C. 1877 1945


1427


To earn it by disdaining it
Is Fame's consummate Fee -
He loves what spurns him -
Look behind - He is pursuing thee.

So let us gather - every Day -
The Aggregate of
Life's Bouquet
Be Honor and not shame -

C. 1877 1945


1428


Water makes many Beds
For those averse to sleep -
Its awful chamber open stands -
Its Curtains blandly sweep -
Abhorrent is the Rest
In undulating Rooms
Whose Amplitude no end invades -
Whose Axis never comes.

C. 1877 1945


1429


We shun because we prize her Face
Lest sight's ineffable disgrace
Our Adoration stain

C. 1877 1945


1430


Who never wanted - maddest Joy
Remains to him unknown -
The Banquet of Abstemiousness
Defaces that of Wine -

Within its reach, though yet ungrasped
Desire's perfect Goal -
No nearer - lest the Actual -
Should disenthrall thy soul -

C. 1877 1896


1431


With Pinions of Disdain
The soul can farther fly
Than any feather specified
in Ornithology -
It wafts this sordid Flesh
Beyond its dull - control
And during its electric gale -
The body is a soul instructing
by the same -
How little work it be -
To put off filaments like this
for immortality

C. 1877 1945


1432


Spurn the temerity -
Rashness of Calvary -
Gay were Gethsemane
Knew we of Thee

C. 1878 1927


1433


How brittle are the Piers
On which our Faith doth tread -
No Bridge below doth totter so -
Yet none hath such a Crowd.

It is as old as God -
Indeed - 'twas built by him -
He sent his Son to test the Plank,
And he pronounced it firm.

C. 1878 1894


1434


Go not too near a House of Rose -
The depredation of a Breeze
Or inundation of a Dew
Alarms its walls away -

Nor try to tie the Butterfly,
Nor climb the Bars of Ecstasy,
In insecurity to lie
is Joy's insuring quality.

C. 1878 1894


1435


Not that he goes - we love him more
Who led us while he stayed.
Beyond earth's trafficking frontier,
For what he moved, he made.

C. 1878 1894


1436


Than Heaven more remote,
For Heaven is the root,
But these the flitted seed,
More flown indeed
Than ones that never were,
Or those that hide, and are.

What madness, by their sIde,
A vision to provide
Of future days
They cannot pralse.

My soul, to find them, come,
They cannot call, they're dumb,
Nor prove, nor woo,
But that they have abode
Is absolute as God,
And instant, too.

C. 1877 1894


1437


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
And not again that Dew be seen
By Physiognomy

Whether by Day Abducted
Or emptied by the Sun
Into the Sea in passing
Eternally unknown

Attested to this Day
That awful Tragedy
By Transport's instability
And Doom's celerity.

C. 1877 1896


1438


Behold this little Bane -
The Boon of all alive -
As common as it is unknown
The name of it is Love -

To lack of it is Woe -
To own of it is Wound -
Not elsewhere - if in Paradise
Its Tantamount be found -

C. 1877 1945


1439


How ruthless are the gentle -
How cruel are the kind -
God broke his contract to his Lamb
To qualify the Wind -

C. 1878 1945


1440


The healed Heart shows its shallow scar
With confidential moan -
Not mended by Mortality
Are Fabrics truly torn -
To go its convalescent way
So shameless is to see
More genuine were Perfidy
Than such Fidelity.

C. 1877 1914


1441


These Fevered Days - to take them to the Forest
Where Waters cool around the mosses crawl -
And shade is all that devastates the stlllness
Seems it sometimes this would be all -

C. 1878 1945


1442


To mend each tattered Faith
There is a needle fair
Though no appearance indicate -
Tis threaded in the Air -

And though it do not wear
As if it never Tore
'Tis very comfortable indeed
And spacious as before -

C. 1878 1945


1443


A chilly Peace infests the Grass
The Sun respectful lies -
Not any Trance of industry
These shadows scrutinize-

Whose Allies go no more astray
For service or for Glee-
But all mankind deliver here
From whatsoever sea -

C. 1878 1945


1444


A little Snow was here and there
Disseminated in her Hair -
Since she and I had met and played
Decade had gathered to Decade -

But Time had added not obtained
Impregnable the Rose
For summer too indelible
Too obdurate for Snows -

C. 1878 1945


1445


Death is the supple Suitor
That wins at last -
It is a stealthy Wooing
Conducted first
By pallid innuendoes
And dim approach
But brave at last with Bugles
And a bisected Coach
It bears away in triumph
To Troth unknown
And Kindred as responsive
As Porcelain.

C. 1878 1945


1446


His Mind like Fabrics of the East
Displayed to the despair
Of everyone but here and there
An humble Purchaser -
For though his price was not of Gold -
More arduous there is -
That one should comprehend the worth
Was all the price there was -

C. 1878 1945


1447


How good his Lava Bed,
To thls laborious Boy -
Who must be up to call the World
And dress the sleepy Day -

C. 1878 1945


1448


How soft a Caterpillar steps-
I find one on my Hand
From such a velvet world it comes
Such plushes at command
Its soundless travels just arrest
My slow - terrestrial eye
Intent upon its own career
What use has it for me -

C. 1878 1945


1449


I thought the Train would never come -
How slow the whistle sang -
I don't believe a peevlsh Bird
So whimpered for the Spring -
I taught my Heart a hundred times
Precisely what to say -
Provoking Lover, when you came
Its Treatise flew away
To hide my strategy too late
To wiser be too soon -
For miseries so halcyon
The happiness atone -

C. 1878 1945


1450


The Road was lit with Moon and star -
The Trees were bright and still -
Descried I - by the distant Light
A Traveller on a Hill -
To magic Perpendiculars
Ascending, though Terrene -
Unknown his shimmering ultimate -
But he indorsed the sheen -

C. 1878 1945


1451


Whoever disenchants
A single Human soul
By failure of irreverence
Is guilty of the whole.

As guileless as a Bird
As graphic as a star
Till the suggestion sinister
Things are not what they are -

C. 1878 1945


1452


Your thoughts don't have words every day
They come a single time
Like signal esoteric sips
Of the communion Wine
Which while you taste so native seems
So easy so to be
You cannot comprehend its price
Nor its infrequency

C. 1878 1945


1453


A Counterfeit - a Plated Person -
I would not be -
Whatever strata of Iniquity
My Nature underlie -
Truth is good Health - and Safety, and the Sky.
How meagre, what an Exile - is a Lie,
And Vocal - when we die -

C, 1879 1924


1454


Those not live yet
Who doubt to live again -
"Again" is of a twice
But this - is one -
The Ship beneath the Draw
Aground - is he?
Death - so - the Hyphen of the Sea -
Deep is the Schedule
Of the Disk to be -
Costumeless Consciousness -
That is he -

C. 1879 1932


1455


Opinion is a flitting thing,
But Truth, outlasts the Sun -
If then we cannot own them both -
Possess the oldest one -

C. 1879 1924


1456


So gay a flower
Bereaves the Mind
As if it were a Woe -
Is Beauty an Affliction - then?
Tradition ought to know -

C. 1879 1914


1457


It stole along so stealthy
Suspicion it was done
Was dim as to the wealthy
Beginning not to own -

C. 1879 1915


1458


Time's wily Chargers will not wait
At any Gate but Woe's -
But there - so gloat to hesitate
They will not stir for blows -

C. 1879 1932


1459


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 -

C. 1879 1890


1460


His Cheek is his Biographer -
As long as he can blush
Perdition is Opprobrium -
Past that, he sins in peace-

C. 1879 1914


1461


"Heavenly Father" - take to thee
The supreme iniquity
Fashioned by thy candid Hand
In a moment contraband -
Though to trust us - seem to us
More respectful - "We are Dust" -
We apologize to thee
For thine own Duplicity -

1879 1914


1462


We knew not that we were to live -
Not when - we are to die -
Our ignorance - our cuirass is -
We wear Mortality
As lightly as an Option Gown
Till asked to take it off -
By his intrusion, God is known -
It is the same with Life -

C. 1879 1894


1463


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 -

C. 1879 1891


1464


One thing of it we borrow
And promise to return-
The Booty and the Sorrow
Its Sweetness to have known -
One thing of it we covet -
The power to forget -
The Anguish of the Avarice
Defrays the Dross of it -

C. 1879 1894


1465


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 -

C. 1871 1891


1466


One of the ones that Midas touched
Who failed to touch us all
Was that confiding Prodigal
The reeling 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 entlre 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 bear with me
Behold his lost Aggrandizement
Upon the Apple Tree -

C. 1879 1891


1467


A little overflowing word
That any, hearing, had inferred
For Ardor or for Tears,
Though Generations pass away,
Traditions ripen and decay,
As eloquent appears -


1468


A winged spark doth soar about -
I never met it near
For Lightning it is oft mistook
When nights are hot and sere -

Its twinkling Travels it pursues
Above the Haunts of men -
A speck of Rapture - first perceived
By feeling it is gone -
Rekindled by some action quaint

C. 1879 1945


1469


If wrecked upon the Shoal of Thought
How is it with the Sea?
The only Vessel that is shunned
Is safe - Simplicity -

C. 1879 1945


1470


The Sweets of Pillage, can be known
To no one but the Thief -
Compassion for Integrity
Is his divinest Grief -

C. 1879 1914


1471


Their Barricade against the Sky
The martial Trees withdraw
And with a Flag at every turn
Their Armies are no more.

What Russet Halts in Nature's March
They indicate Or cause
An inference of Mexico
Effaces the Surmise -

Recurrent to the After Mind
That Massacre of Air -
The Wound that was not Wound nor Scar
But Holidays of War -

C. 1879 1945


1472


To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee -

C. 1879 1945


1473


We talked with each other about each other
Though neither of us spoke -
We were listening to the seconds' Races
And the Hoofs of the Clock -
Pausing in Front of our Palsied Faces
Time compassion took -
Arks of Reprieve he offered to us -
Ararats - we took -

C. 1879 1945


1474


Estranged from Beauty - none can be -
For Beauty is Infinity -
And power to be finite ceased
Before Identity was leased.

C. 1879 1945


1475


Fame is the one that does not stay -
Its occupant must die
Or out of sight of estimate
Ascend incessantly -
Or be that most insolvent thing
A Lightning in the Germ -
Electrical the embryo
But we demand the Flame

C. 1879 1945


1476


His voice decrepit was with Joy -
Her words did totter so
How old the News of Love must be
To make Lips elderly
That purled a moment since with Glee -
Is it Delight or Woe -
Or Terror - that do decorate
This livid interview -

C. 1879 1945


1477


How destitute is he
Whose Gold is firm
Who finds it every time
The small stale Sum -
When Love with but a Pence
Will so display
As is a disrespect
To India.

C. 1879 1914


1478


Look back on Time, with kindly eyes -
He doubtless did his best -
How softly sinks that trembling sun
In Human Nature's West -

C. 1879 1890


1479


The Devil - had he fidelity
Would be the best friend -
Because he has ability -
But Devils cannot mend -
Perfidy is the virtue
That would but he resign
The Devil - without question
Were thoroughly divine

C. 1879 1914


1480


The fascinating chill that music leaves
Is Earth's corroboration
Of Ecstasy's impediment -
'Tis Rapture's germination
In timid and tumultuous soil
A fine - estranging creature -
To something upper wooing us
But not to our Creator -

C. 1879 I945


1481


The way Hope builds his House
It is not with a sill -
Nor Rafter - has that Edifice
But only Pinnacle -

Abode in as supreme
This superficies
As if it were of Ledges smit
Or mortised with the Laws -


C. 1879 1945


1482


'Tis whiter than an Indian Pipe -
'Tis dimmer than a Lace -
No stature has it, like a Fog
When you approach the place -
Not any voice imply it here
Or intimate it there
A spirit - how doth it accost -
What function hath the Air?
This limitless Hyperbole
Each one of us shall be -
'Tis Drama - if Hypothesis
It be not Tragedy -

C. 1879 1896


1483


The Robin is a Gabriel
In humble circumstances -
His Dress denotes him socially,
Of Transport's Working Classes -
He has the punctuality
Of the New England Farmer -
The same oblique integrity,
A Vista vastly warmer -

A small but sturdy Residence,
A self denying Household,
The Guests of Perspicacity
Are all that cross his Threshold -
As covert as a Fugitive,
Cajoling Consternatlon
By Ditties to the Enemy
And Sylvan Punctuation -

C. 1880 1894


1484


We shall find the Cube of the Rainbow.
Of that, there is no doubt.
But the Arc of a Lover's conjecture
Eludes the finding out.

C. 1880 1894


1485


Love is done when Love's begun,
Sages say,
But have Sages known?
Truth adjourn your Boon
Without Day.

C. 1880 1894


1486


Her spirit rose to such a height
Her countenance it did inflate
Like one that fed on awe.
More prudent to assault the dawn
Than merit the ethereal scorn
That effervesced from her.

C. 1880 1932


1487


The Savior must have been
A docile Gentleman -
To come so far so cold a Day
For little Fellowmen -
The Road to Bethlehem
Since He and I were Boys
Was leveled, but for that 'twould be
A rugged billion Miles -

C. 1880 1915


1488


Birthday of but a single pang
That there are less to come-
Afflictive is the Adjective
But affluent the doom -

C. 1880 1915


1489


A Dimple in the Tomb
Makes that ferocIous Room
A Home -

C. 1880 1931


1490


The Face in evanescence lain
Is more distinct than ours -
And ours surrendered for its sake
As Capsules are for Flower's-
Or is it the confiding sheen
Dissenting to be won
Descending to enamor us
Of Detriment divine?

C. 1880 1931


1491


The Road to Paradise is plain,
And holds scarce one.
Not that it is not firm
But we presume
A Dimpled Road
Is more preferred.
The Belles of Paradise are few -
Not me - nor you -
But unsuspected things -
Mines have no Wings.

C. 1880 1945


1492


"And with what body do they come!" -
Then they do come - Rejoice!
What Door - What Hour - Run - run - My Soul!
Illuminate the House!
"Body!" Then real - a Face and Eyes -
To know that it is them! -
Paul knew the Man that knew the News -
He passed through Bethlehem -

C. 1880 1894


1493


Could that sweet Darkness where they dwell
Be once disclosed to us
The clamor for their loveliness
Would burst the Loneliness -

? 1894


1494


The competitions of the sky
Corrodeless ply.

C. 1880 1931


1495


The Thrill came slowly like a Boon for
Centuries delayed
Its fitness growing like the Flood
In sumptuous solitude -
The desolation only missed
While Rapture changed its Dress
And stood amazed before the Change
In ravished Holiness -

C. 1880 1945


1496


All that I do
Is in review
To his enamored mind
I know his eye
Where e'er I ply
Is pushing close behind
Not any Port
Nor any flight
But he doth there preside
What omnipresence lies in wait
For her to be a Bride

C. 1880 1945


1497


Facts by our side are never sudden
Until they look around
And then they scare us like a spectre
Protruding from the Ground -
The height of our portentous Neighbor
We never know -
Till summoned to his recognition
By an Adieu -
Adieu for whence
The sage cannot conjecture
The bravest die
As ignorant of their resumption
As you or I -

C. 1880 1945


1498


Glass was the Street - in tinsel Peril
Tree and Traveller stood -
Filled was the Air with merry venture
Hearty with Boys the Road -
Shot the lithe Sleds like shod vibrations
Emphasized and gone
It is the Past's supreme italic
Makes this Present mean -

C. 1880 1945


1499


How firm Eternity must look
To crumbling men like me
The only Adamant Estate
In all Identity -
How mlghty to the insecure
Thy Physiognomy
To whom not any Face cohere -
Unless concealed in thee

C. 1880 1945


1500


It came his turn to beg -
The begging for the life
Is different from another Alms
'Tis Penury in Chief -

I scanned his narrow realm
I gave him leave to live
Lest Gratitude revive the snake
Though smuggled his reprieve

C. 1880 1945


1501


Its little Ether Hood
Doth sit upon its Head -
The millinery supple
Of the sagacious God -

Till when it slip away
A nothing at a time -
And Dandelion's Drama
Expires in a stem.

C. 1880 1945


1502


I saw the wind within her
I knew it blew for me -
But she must buy my shelter
I asked Humility

C. 1880 1955


1503


More than the Grave is closed to me -
The Grave and that Eternity
To which the Grave adheres -
I cling to nowhere till I fall -
The Crash of nothing, yet of all -
How similar appears -

C. 1880 1945


1504


Of whom so dear
The name to hear
Illumines with a Glow
As intimate - as fugitive
As Sunset on the snow -

C. 1880 1945


1505


She could not live upon the Past
The Present did not know her
And so she sought this sweet at last
And nature gently owned her
The mother that has not a knell
for either Duke or Robin

C. 1880 1945


1506


Summer is shorter than any one -
Life is shorter than Summer -
Seventy Years is spent as quick
As an only Dollar -

Sorrow - now - is polite - and stays -
See how well we spurn him -
Equally to abhor Delight -
Equally retain him -

C. 1880 1945


1507


The Pile of Years is not so high
As when you came before
But it is rising every Day
From recollection's Floor
And while by standing on my Heart
I still can reach the top
Efface the mountain with your face
And catch me ere I drop

C. 1880 1945


1508


You cannot make Remembrance grow
When it has lost its Root -
The tightening the Soil around
And setting it upright
Deceives perhaps the Universe
But not retrieves the Plant -
Real Memory, like Cedar Feet
Is shod with Adamant -
Nor can you cut Remembrance down
When it shall once have grown -
Its Iron Buds will sprout anew
However overthrown -

C. 1880 1945


1509


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 -
Tis starving makes it fat -

C. 1881 1891


1510


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 -

C. 1881 1891


1511


My country need not change her gown,
Her triple suit as sweet
As when 'twas 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.

C. 1881 1891


1512


All things swept sole away
This - is immensity -

C. 1881 1931


1513


"Go traveling with us!"
Her travels daily be
By routes of ecstasy
To Evening's Sea -

C. 1881 1931


1514


An Antiquated Tree
Is cherished of the Crow
Because that Junior Foliage is disrespectful now
To venerable Birds
Whose Corporation Coat
Would decorate Oblivion's
Remotest Consulate.

C. 1881 1945


1515


The Things that never can come back, are several -
Childhood - some forms of Hope - the Dead -
Though Joys - like Men - may sometunes make a Journey -
And still abide -
We do not mourn for Traveler, or Sailor,
Their Routes are fair -
But think enlarged of all that they will tell us
Returning here -
"Here!" There are typic "Heres" -
Foretold Locations -
The Spirit does not stand -
Himself - at whatsoever Fathom
His Native Land

C. 1881 1945


1516


No Autumn's intercepting Chill
Appalls this Tropic Breast -
But African Exuberance
And Asiatic rest.

C. 1881 1914


1517


How much of Source escapes with thee -
How chief thy sessions be -
For thou hast borne a universe
Entirely away.

C. 1881 1894


1518


Not seeing, still we know -
Not knowing, guess -
Not guessing, smile and hide
And half caress -

And quake - and turn away,
Seraphic fear -
Is Eden's innuendo
"If you dare"?

C. 1881 1894


1519


The Dandelion's pallid tube
Astonishes the Grass,
And Winter instantly becomes
An infinite Alas -

The tube uplifts a signal Bud
And then a shouting Flower,
The Proclamation of the Suns
That sepulture is o'er.

C. 1881 1894


1520


The stem of a departed Flower
Has still a silent rank
The Bearer from an Emerald Court
Of a Despatch of Pink.

C. 1881 1894


1521


The Butterfly upon the Sky,
That doesn't know its Name
And hasn't any tax to pay
And hasn't any Home
Is just as high as you and I,
And higher, I believe,
So soar away and never sigh
And that's the way to grieve -

C. 1881 1894


1522


His little Hearse like Figure
Unto itself a Dirge
To a delusive Lilac
The vanity divulge
Of Industry and Morals
And every righteous thing
For the divine Perdition
Of Idleness and Spring

C. 1881 1915


1523


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 -

C. 1881 1894


1524


A faded Boy - in sallow Clothes
Who drove a lonesome Cow
To pastures of Oblivion -
A statesman's Embryo -

The Boys that whistled are extinct -
The Cows that fed and thanked
Remanded to a Ballad's Barn
Or Clover's Retrospect -

C. 1881 1945


1525


He lived the Life of Ambush
And went the way of Dusk
And now against his subtle name
There stands an Asterisk
As confident of him as we -
Impregnable we are -
The whole of Immortality intrenched
within a star

C. 1881 1945


1526


His oriental heresies
Exhilarate the Bee,
And filling all the Earth and Air
With gay apostasy

Fatigued at last, a Clover plain
Allures his jaded eye
That lowly Breast where Butterflies
Have felt it meet to die -

C. 1881 1945


1527


Oh give it Motion - deck it sweet
With Artery and Vein -
Upon its fastened Lips lay words -
Affiance it again
To that Pink stranger we call Dust -
Acquainted more with that
Than with this horizontal one
That will not lift - its Hat -

C. 1881 1945


1528


The Moon upon her fluent Route
Defiant of a Road -
The Star's Etruscan Argument
Substantiate a God -

If Aims impel these Astral Ones
The ones allowed to know
Know that which makes them as forgot
As Dawn forgets them - now -

C. 1881 1914


1529


'Tis Seasons since the Dimpled War
In which we each were Conqueror
And each of us were slain
And Centuries 'twill be and more
Another Massacre before
So modest and so vain -
Without a Formula we fought
Each was to each the Pink Redoubt -

C. 1881 1945


1530


A Pang is more conspicuous in Spring
In contrast with the things that sing
Not Birds entirely - but Minds -
Minute Effulgencies and Winds -
When what they sung for is undone
Who cares about a Blue Bird's Tune -
Why, Resurrection had to wait
Till they had moved a Stone -

C. 1881 1945


1531


Above Oblivion's Tide there is a Pier
And an effaceless "Few" are lifted there -
Nay - lift themselves - Fame has no Arms -
And but one smile - that meagres Balms-

C. 1881 1945


1532


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 should lie in wait
For such a Foe as this -

C. 1881 1945


1533


On that specific Pillow
Our projects Hit away -
The Night's tremendous Morrow
And whether sleep will stay
Or usher us - a stranger -
To situations new
The effort to comprise it
Is all the soul can do.

C. 1881 1945


1534


Society for me my misery
Since Gift of Thee -

C. 1881 1945


1535


The Life that tied too tight escapes
Will ever after run
With a prudential look behind
And spectres of the Rein -
The Horse that scents the living Grass
And sees the Pastures smile
Will be retaken with a shot
If he is caught at all -

C. 1881 1945


1536


There comes a warning like a spy
A shorter breath of Day
A stealing that is not a stealth
And Summers are away -

C. 1881 1945


1537


Candor - my tepid friend -
Come not to play with me -
The Myrrhs, and Mochas, of the Mind
Are its iniquity -

C. 1881 1914


1538


Follow wise Orion
Till you waste your Eye -
Dazzingly decamping
He is just as high -

C. 1882 1914


1539


Now I lay thee down to Sleep -
Pray the Lord thy Dust to keep -
And if thou live before thou wake -
I pray the Lord thy Soul to make -

C. 1882 1924


1540


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, that would be gone -
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

C. 1865 1891


1541


No matter where the Saints abide,
They make their Circuit fair
Behold how great a Firmament
Accompanies a Star.

C. 1882? 1914


1542


Come show thy Durham Breast
To her who loves thee best,
Delicious Robin -
And if it be not me
At least within my Tree
Do the avowing -
Thy Nuptial so minute
Perhaps is more astute
Than vaster suing -
For so to soar away
Is our propensity
The Day ensuing -

C. 1882 1894


1543


Obtaining but our own Extent
In whatsoever Realm -
'Twas Christ's own personal Expanse
That bore him from the Tomb

C. 1882 1947


1544


Who has not found the Heaven - below -
Will fail of it above -
For Angels rent the House next ours,
Wherever we remove -

C. 1883 1896


1545


The Bible is an antique Volume -
Written by faded Men
At the suggestion of Holy Spectres -
Subjects - Bethlehem -
Eden - the ancient Homestead -
Satan - the Brigadier -
Judas - the Great Defaulter -
David - the Troubadour-
Sin - a distinguished Precipice
Others must resist-
Boys that "believe" are very lonesome -
Other Boys are "lost" -
Had but the Tale a warbling Teller -
All the Boys would come -
Orpheus' Sermon captivated -
It did not condemn -

C. 1882 1924


1546


Sweet Pirate of the heart,
Not Pirate of the Sea,
What wrecketh thee?
Some spice's Mutiny -
Some Attar's perfidy?
Confide in me.

C. 1882 1894


1547


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 amount remain -

C. 1882 1896


1548


Meeting by Accident,
We hovered by design -
As often as a Century
An error so divine
Is ratified by Destiny,
But Destiny is old
And economical of Bliss
As Midas is of Gold -

C. 1882 1945


1549


My Wars are laid away in Books -
I have one Battle more -
A Foe whom I have never seen
But oft has scanned me o'er -
And hesitated me between
And others at my side,
But chose the best - Neglecting me - till
All the rest, have died -
How sweet if I am not forgot
By Chums that passed away -
Since Playmates at threescore and ten
Are such a scarcity -

C. 1882 1945


1550


The pattern of the sun
Can fit but him alone
For sheen must have a Disk
To be a sun -

C. 1882 1945


1551


Those - dying then,
Knew where they went -
They went to God's Right Hand -
That Hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found -

The abdication of Belief
Makes the Behavior small -
Better an ignis fatuus
Than no illume at all -

C. 1882 1945


1552


Within thy Grave!
Oh no, but on some other flight -
Thou only camest to mankind
To rend it with Good night -

C. 1882 1945


1553


Bliss is the plaything of the child -
The secret of the man
The sacred stealth of Boy and Girl
Rebuke it if we can

C. 1882 1945


1554


"Go tell It" - What a Message -
To whom - is specified -
Not murmur - not endearment -
But simply - we - obeyed -
Obeyed - a Lure - a Longing?
Oh Nature - none of this -
To Law - said sweet Thermopylae
I give my dying Kiss -

C. 1882 1945


1555


I groped for him before I knew
With solemn nameless need
All other bounty sudden chaff
For this foreshadowed Food
WhIch others taste and spurn and sneer -
Though I within suppose
That consecrated it could be
The only Food that grows

C. 1882 1945


1556


Image of Light, Adieu -
Thanks for the interview -
So long - so short -
Preceptor of the whole -
Coeval Cardinal -
Impart - Depart -

C. 1882 1945


1557


Lives he in any other world
My faith cannot reply
Before it was imperative
'Twas all distinct to me -

C. 1882 1945


1558


Of Death I try to think like this -
The Well in which they lay us
Is but the likeness of the Brook
That menaced not to slay us,
But to invite by that Dismay
Which is the Zest of sweetness
To the same Flower Hesperian,
Decoying but to greet us -

I do remember when a Child
Wwith bolder Playmates straying
To where a Brook that seemed a Sea
Withheld us by its roaring
From just a Purple Flower beyond
Until constrained to clutch It
If Doom itself were the result,
The boldest leaped, and clutched it -

C. 1882 1945


1559


Tried always and Condemned by thee
Permit me this reprieve
That dying I may earn the look
For which I cease to live-

C. 1882 1945


1560


To be forgot by thee
Surpasses Memory
Of other minds
The Heart cannot forget
Unless it contemplate
What it declines
I was regarded then
Raised from oblivion
A single time
To be remembered what -
Worthy to be forgot
Is my renown

C. 1883 1945


1561


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 -

C. 1883 1891


1562


Her Losses make our Gains ashamed -
She bore Life's empty Pack
As gallantly as if the East
Were swinging at her Back.
Life's empty Pack is heaviest,
As every Porter knows -
In vain to punish Honey -
It only sweeter grows.

C. 1883 1894


1563


By homely gift and hindered Words
The human heart is told
Of Nothing -
"Nothing" is the force
That renovates the World -

C. 1883 1955


1564


Pass to thy Rendezvous of Light,
Pangless except for us -
Who slowly ford the Mystery
Which thou hast leaped across!

C. 1883 1924


1565


Some Arrows slay but whom they strike -
But this slew all but him -
Who so appareled his Escape -
Too trackless for a Tomb -

C. 1883 1932


1566


Climbing to reach the costly Hearts
To which he gave the worth,
He broke them, fearing punishment
He ran away from Earth -

C. 1883 1931


1567


The Heart has many Doors -
I can but knock -
For any sweet "Come in"
Impelled to hark -
Not saddened by repulse,
Repast to me
That somewhere, there exists,
Supremacy -

C. 1883 1955


1568


To see her is a Picture -
To hear her is a Tune -
To know her an Intemperance
As innocent as June -
To know her not - Affliction -
To own her for a Friend
A warmth as near as if the Sun
Were shining in your Hand.

C. 1883 1945


1569


The Clock strikes one that just struck two -
Some schism in the Sum -
A Vagabond for Genesis
Has wrecked the Pendulum -

C. 1883 1894


1570


Forever honored be the Tree
Whose Apple Winterworn
Enticed to Breakfast from the Sky
Two Gabriels Yestermorn.

They regtstered in Nature's Book
As Robins - Sire and Son -
But Angels have that modest way
To screen them from Renown

C. 1883 1914


1571


How slow the Wind -
How slow the sea -
How late their Feathers be!

C. 1883 1894


1572


We wear our sober Dresses when we die,
But Summer, frilled as for a Holiday
Adjourns her sigh-

C. 1883 1894


1573


To the bright east she lies,
Brothers of Paradise
Remit her home,
Without a change of wings,
Or Love's convenient things,
Enticed to come.

Fashioning what she is,
Fathoming what she was,
We deem we dream -
And that dissolves the days
Through which existence strays
Homeless at home.

C. 1883 1894


1574


No ladder needs the bird but skies
To situate its wings,
Nor any leader's grim baton
Arraigns it as it sings.
The implements of bliss are few -
As Jesus says of Him,
"Come unto me" the moiety
That wafts the cherubim.

C. 1883? 1894


1575


The Bat is dun, with wrinkled Wings -
Like fallow Article -
And not a song pervade 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 Malignity
Auspiciously withheld -

To his adroit Creator
Ascribe no less the praise -
Beneficent, believe me,
His Eccentricities

C. 1876 1896


1576


The Spirit lasts - but in what mode -
Below, the Body speaks,
But as the Spirit furnishes -
Apart, it never talks -
The Music in the Violin
Does not emerge alone
But Arm in Arm with Touch, yet Touch
Alone - is not a Tune -
The Spirit lurks within the Flesh
Like Tides within the Sea
That make the Water live, estranged
What would the Either be -
Does that know - now - or does it cease -
That which to this is done,
Resuming at a mutual date
With every future one?
Instinct pursues the Adamant,
Exacting this Reply -
Adversity if it may be, or
Wild Prosperity,
The Rumor's Gate was shut so tight
Before my Mind was sown,
Not even a Prognostic's Push
Could make a Dent thereon -

C. 1883 1894


1577


Morning is due to all -
To some - the Night -
To an imperial few -
The Auroral light.

C. 1882 1931


1578


Blossoms will run away,
Cakes reign but a Day,
But Memory like Melody
Is pink Eternally.

C. 1883 1939


1579


It would not know if it were spurned,
This gallant little flower -
How therefore safe to be a flower
If One would tamper there.

To enter, it would not aspire-
But may it not despair
That it is not a Cavalier,
To dare and perish there?

C. 1882 1945


1580


We shun it ere it comes,
Afraid of Joy,
Then sue it to delay
And lest it fly,
Beguile it more and more-
May not this be
Old Suitor Heaven,
Like our dismay at thee?

C. 1882 1894


1581


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 Happy 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 Liight -
The Thought is quiet as a Flake -
A Crash without a Sound,
How Life's reverberatlon
Its Explanation found -

C. 1883 1932


1582


Where Roses would not dare to go,
What Heart would risk the way-
And so I send my Crimson Scouts
To sound the Enemy -

C. 1883 1945


1583


Witchcraft was hung, in History,
But History and I
Find all the Witchcraft that we need
Around us, every Day -

C. 1883 1945


1584


Expanse cannot be lost -
Not Joy, but a Decree
Is Deity -
His Scene, Infinity -
Whose rumor's Gate was shut so tight
Before my Beam was sown,
Not even a Prognostic's push
Could make a Dent thereon-

The World that thou hast opened
Shuts for thee,
But not alone,
We all have followed thee -
Escape more slowly
To thy Tracts of Sheen -
The Tent is listening,
But the Troops are gone!

C. 1883 1955


1585


The Bird her punctual music brings
And lays it in its place -
Its place is in the Human Heart
And in the Heavenly Grace -
What respite from her thrilling toil
Did Beauty ever take -
But Work might be electric Rest
To those that Magic make -

C. 1883 1955


1586


To her derided Home
A Weed of Summer came -
She did not know her station low
Nor Ignominy's Name -
Bestowed a summer long
Upon a fameless Bower -
Then swept as lightly from disdain
As Lady from her Bower -
Of Bliss the Codes are few -
As Jesus cites of Him -
"Come unto me" the moiety
That wafts the Seraphim -

C. 1883 1945


1587


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 -

C. 1883 1890


1588


This Me - that walks and works - must die,
Some fair or stormy Day,
Adversity if it may be
Or wild prosperity
The Rumor's Gate was shut so tight
Before my mind was born
Not even a Prognostic's push
Can make a Dent thereon -

C. 1883 1945


1589


Cosmopolites without a plea
Alight in every Land
The compliments of Paradise
From those within my Hand

Their dappled Journey to themselves
A compensation fair
Knock and it shall be opened
Is their Theology

C. 1883 1945


1590


Not at Home to Callers
Says the Naked Tree -
Bonnet due in April -
Wishing you Good Day -

C. 1883 1924


1591


The Bobolink is gone -
The Rowdy of the Meadow -
And no one swaggers now but me -
The Presbyterian Birds
Can now resume the Meeting
He boldly interrupted that overflowing Day
When supplicating mercy
In a portentous way
He swung upon the Decalogue
And shouted let us pray -

C. 1883 1945


1592


The Lassitudes of Contemplation
Beget a force
They are the spirit's still vacation
That him refresh -
The Dreams consolidate in action -
What mettle fair

C. 1883 1945


1593


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 Moccasin
That very instant passed -
On a strange Mob of panting Trees
And Fences fled away
And Rivers where the Houses ran
Those looked that lived - that Day -
The Bell within the steeple wild
The flying tidings told -
How much can come
And much can go,
And yet abide the World!

C. 1883 1891


1594


Immured in Heaven!
What a Cell!
Let every Bondage be,
Thou sweetest of the Universe,
Like that which ravished thee!

C. 1883 1914


1595


Declaiming Waters none may dread -
But Waters that are still
Are so for that most fatal cause
In Nature - they are full -

C. 1884 1932


1596


Few, yet enough,
Enough is One -
To that ethereal throng
Have not each one of us the right
To stealthily belong?

C. 1884 1896


1597


'Tis not the swaying frame we miss,
It is the steadfast Heart,
That had it beat a thousand years,
With Love alone had bent,
Its fervor the electric Oar,
That bore it through the Tomb,
Ourselves, denied the privilege,
Consolelessly presume -

C. 1884 1932


1598


Who is it seeks my Pillow Nights -
With plain inspecting face -
"Did you" or "Did you not," to ask -
'Tis "Conscience" - Childhood's Nurse -

With Martial Hand she strokes the Hair
Upon my wincing Head -
"All" Rogues "shall have their part in" what -
The Phosphorus of God -

C. 1884 1914


1599


Though the great Waters sleep,
That they are still the Deep,
We cannot doubt-
No vacillating God
Ignited this Abode
To put it out -

C. 1884 1894


1600


Upon his Saddle sprung a Bird
And crossed a thousand Trees
Before a Fence without a Fare
His Fantasy did please
And then he lifted up his Throat
And squandered such a Note
A Universe that overheard
Is stricken by it yet -

C. 1884 1947


1601


Of God we ask one favor,
That we may be forgiven -
For what, he is presumed to know -
The Crime, from us, is hidden -
Immured the whole of Life
Within a magic Prison
We reprimand the Happiness
That too competes with Heaven.

C. 1884 1894


1602


Pursuing you in your transitions,
In other Motes -
Of other Myths
Your requisition be.
The Prism never held the Hues,
It only heard them play -

C. 1884 1931


1603


The going from a world we know
To one a wonder still
Is like the child's adversity
Whose vista is a hill,
Behind the hill is sorcery
And everything unknown,
But will the secret compensate
For climbing it alone?

C. 1884


1604


We send the Wave to find the Wave -
An Errand so divine,
The Messenger enamored too,
Forgetting to return,
We make the wise distinction still,
Soever made in vain,
The sagest time to dam the sea is when the sea is gone -

C. 1884 1894


1605


Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.

C. 1884 1894


1606


Quite empty, quite at rest,
The Robin locks her Nest, and tries her Wings.
She does not know a Route
But puts her Craft about
For rumored Springs -
She does not ask for Noon -
She does not ask for Boon,
Crumbless and homeless, of but one request -
The Birds she lost -

C. 1884 1951


1607


Within that little Hive
Such Hints of Honey lay
As made Reality a Dream
And Dreams, Reality -

C. 1884 1955


1608


The ecstasy to guess
Were a receipted bliss
If grace could talk.

C. 1884 1894


1609


Sunset that screens, reveals -
Enhancing what we see
By menaces of Amethyst
And Moats of Mystery.

C. 1884 Z945


1610


Morning that comes but once,
Considers coming twice -
Two Dawns upon a single Morn,
Make Life a sudden price.

C. 1884 1945


1611


Their dappled importunity
Disparage or dismiss -
The Obloquies of Etiquette
Are obsolete to Bliss -

C. 1884 1945


1612


The Auctioneer of Parting
His "Going, going, gone"
Shouts even from the Crucifix,
And brings his Hammer down -
He only sells the Wilderness,
The prices of Despair
Range from a single human Heart
To Two - not any more -

C. 1884 1945


1613


Not Sickness stains the Brave,
Nor any Dart,
Nor Doubt of Scene to come,
But an adjourning Heart -

C. 1884 1894


1614


Parting with Thee reluctantly,
That we have never met,
A Heart sometimes a Foreigner,
Remembers it forgot-

C. 1884 1931


1615


Oh what a Grace is this,
What Majesties of Peace,
That having breathed
The fine - ensuing Right
Without Diminuet Proceed!

C. 1884 1945


1616


Who abdicated Ambush
And went the way of Dusk,
And now against his subtle Name
There stands an Asterisk
As confident of him as we -
Impregnable we are -
The whole of Immortality
Secreted in a Star.

C. 1884 1894


1617


To try to speak, and miss the way
And ask it of the Tears,
Is Gratitude's sweet poverty,
The Tatters that he wears-

A better Coat if he possessed
Would help him to conceal,
Not subjugate, the Mutineer
Whose title is "the Soul."

C. 1884 1894


1618


There are two Mays
And then a Must
And after that a Shall.
How infinite the compromise
That indicates I will!

C. 1884 1955


1619

(* See poem 1525.)

Not knowing when the Dawn will come,
I open every Door,
Or has it Feathers, like a Bird,
Or Billows, like a Shore -

C. 1884 1896


1620


Circumference thou Bride of Awe
Possessing thou shalt be
Possessed by every hallowed Knight
That dares to covet thee

C. 1884 1932


1621


A Flower will not trouble her. it has so small a Foot,
And yet if you compare the Lasts,
Hers is the smallest Boot -

C. 1884 1955


1622


A Sloop of Amber slips away
Upon an Ether Sea,
And wrecks in Peace a Purple Tar,
The Son of Ecstasy -

C. 1884 1896


1623


A World made penniless by that departure
Of minor fabrics begs
But sustenance is of the spirit
The Gods but Dregs

C. 1885 1945


1624


Apparently with no surprise
To any happy Flower
The Frost beheads it at its play -
In accidental power -
The blonde Assassin passes on -
The Sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another Day
For an Approving God.

C. 1884


1625


Back from the cordial Grave I drag thee
He shall not take thy Hand
Nor put his spacious arm around thee
That none can understand

C. 1885 1945


1626


No Life can pompless 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!

C. 1885 1891


1627


The pedigree of Honey
Does not concern the Bee,
Nor lineage of Ecstasy
Delay the Butterfly
On spangled journeys to the peak
Of some perceiveless thing-
The right of way to Tripoli
A more essential thing.

version 1

C. 1884 1945

The Pedigree of Honey
Does not concern the Bee-
A Clover, any time, to him.,
is Aristocracy -

version II

C. 1884 1890


1628


A Drunkard cannot meet a Cork
Without a Revery-
And so encountering a Fly
This January Day
Jamaicas of Remembrance stir
That send me reeling in -
The moderate drinker of Delight
Does not deserve the spring -
Of juleps, part are in the Jug
And more are in the joy -
Your connoisseur in Liquors
Consults the Bumble Bee -

C. 1884 1945


1629


Arrows enamored of his Heart -
Forgot to rankle there
And Venoms he mistook for Balms
Disdained to rankle there -

C. 1884 1945


1630


As from the earth the light Balloon
Asks nothing but release -
Ascension that for which it was,
Its soaring Residence.
The spent looks upon the Dust
That fastened it so long
With indignation,
As a Bird
Defrauded of its song.

C. 1884 1945


1631


Oh Future! thou secreted peace
Or subterranean woe -
Is there no wandering route of grace
That leads away from thee -
No circuit sage of all the course
Descried by cunning Men
To balk thee of thy sacred Prey -
Advancing to thy Den -

C. 1884 1945


1632


So give me back to Death -
The Death I never feared
Except that it deprived of thee -
And now, by Life deprived,
In my own Grave I breathe
And estimate its size -
Its size is all that Hell can guess -
And all that Heaven was -

C. 1884 1945


1633


Still own thee - still thou art
What surgeons call alive -
Though slipping - slipping I perceive
To thy reportless Grave -
Which question shall I clutch -
What answer wrest from thee
Before thou dost exude away
In the recallless sea?

C. 1884 1945


1634


Talk not to me of Summer Trees
The foliage of the mind
A Tabernacle is for Birds
Of no corporeal kind
And winds do go that way at noon
To their Ethereal Homes
Whose Bugles call the least of us
To undepicted Realms

C. 1884 1945


1635


The Jay his Castanet has struck
Put on your muff for Winter
The Tippet that ignores his voice
Is impudent to nature

Of Swarthy Days he is the close
His Lotus is a chestnut
The Cricket drops a sable line
No more from yours at present

C. 1884 1945


1636


The Sun in reining to the West
Makes not as much of sound
As Cart of man in road below
Adroitly turning round
That Whiffletree of Amethyst

C. 1884 1945


1637


Is it too late to touch you, Dear?
We this moment knew -
Love Marine and Love terrene -
Love celestial too -

C. 1885 1894


1638


Go thy great way!
The Stars thou meetst
Are even as Thyself -
For what are Stars but Asterisks
To point a human Life?

C. 1885 1894


1639


A Letter is a joy of Earth-
It is denied the Gods -

C. 1885 1931


1640


Take all away from me, but leave me Ecstasy,
And I am richer then than all my Fellow Men-
Ill it becometh me to dwell so wealthily
When at my very Door are those possessing more,
In abject poverty -

C. 1885 1931


1641


Betrothed to Righteousness might be
An Ecstasy discreet
But Nature relishes the Pinks
Which she was taught to eat -

C. 1885 1945


1642


"Red Sea," indeed! Talk not to me
Of purple Pharaoh -
I have a Navy in the West
Would pierce his Columns thro' -
Guileless, yet of such Glory fine
That all along the Line
Is it, or is it not, Marine -
Is it, or not, divine -
The Eye inquires with a sigh
That Earth sh'd be so big -
What Exultation in the Woe -
What Wine in the fatigue!

C. 1885 1945


1643


Extol thee - could I? Then I will
By saying nothing new-
But just the truest truth
That thou art heavenly.

Perceiving thee is evidence
That we are of the sky
Partaking thee a guaranty
Of immortality

C. 1885 1945


1644


Some one prepared this mighty show
To which without a Ticket go
The nations and the Days-

Displayed before the simplest Door
That all may witness it and more,
The pomp of summer Days.

C. 1885 1945


1645


The Ditch is dear to the Drunken man
For is it not his Bed -
His Advocate - his Edifice?
How safe his fallen Head
In her disheveled Sanctity -
Above him is the sky -
Oblivion bending over him
And Honor leagues away.

C. 1885 1945


1646


Why should we hurry - why indeed?
When every way we fly
We are molested equally
By immortality.
No respite from the inference
That this which is begun,
Though where its labors lie
A bland uncertainty
Besets the sight
This mighty night -

C. 1885 1945


1647


Of Glory not a Beam is left
But her Eternal House -
The Asterisk is for the Dead,
The Living, for the Stars -

C. 1886 1931


1648


The immortality she gave
We borrowed at her Grave -
For just one Plaudit famishing,
The Might of Human love -

C. 1886 1931


1649


A Cap of Lead across the sky
Was tight and surly drawn
We could not find the mighty Face
The Figure was withdrawn -

A Chill came up as from a shaft
Our noon became a well
A Thunder storm combines the charms
Of Winter and of Hell.

? 1914


1650


A lane of Yellow led the eye
Unto a Purple Wood
Whose soft inhabitants to be
Surpasses solitude
If Bird the silence contradict
Or flower presume to show
In that low summer of the West
Impossible to know-

? 1955


1651


A Word made Flesh is seldom
And tremblingly partook
Nor then perhaps reported
But have I not mistook
Each one of us has tasted
With ecstasies of stealth
The very food debated
To our specific strength-

A Word that breathes distinctly
Has not the power to die
Cohesive as the Spirit
It may expire if He-
"Made Flesh and dwelt among us "
Could condescension be
Like this consent of Language
This loved Philology.

? 1955


1652


Advance is Life's condition
The Grave but a Relay
Supposed to be a terminus
That makes it hated so -

The Tunnel is not lighted
Existence with a wall
Is better we consider
Than not exist at all -

? 1955


1653


As we pass Houses musing slow
If they be occupied
So minds pass minds
If they be occupied

? 1955


1654


Beauty crowds me Till I die
Beauty mercy have on me
But if I expire today
Let it be in sight of thee-

? 1914


1655


Conferring with myself
My stranger disappeared
Though first upon a berry fat
Miraculously fared
How paltry looked my cares
My practise how absurd
Superfluous my whole career
Beside this travelling Bird

? 1955


1656


Down Time's quaint stream
Without an oar
We are enforced to sail
Our Port a secret
Our Perchance a Gale
What Skipper would
Incur the Risk
What Buccaneer would ride
Without a surety from the Wind
Or schedule of the Tide -

? 1955


1657


Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.

How fair on looking back, the Day
We sauntered. from the Door -
Unconscious our returning,
But discover it no more.

? 1955


1658


Endanger it, and the Demand
Of tickets for a sigh
Amazes the Humility
Of Credibility-

Recover it to Nature
And that dejected Fleet
Find Consternation's Carnival
Divested of Its Meat.

? 1914


1659


Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the
Farmer's Corn-
Men eat of it and die.

? 1914


1660


Glory is that bright tragic thing
That for an instant
Means Dominion -
Warms some poor name
That never felt the Sun,
Gently replacing
In oblivion -

? 1955


1661


Guest am I to have
Light my northern room
Why to cordiality so averse to come
Other friends adjourn
Other bonds decay
Why avoid so narrowly
My fidelity -

? 1955


1662


He went by sleep that drowsy route
To the surmising Inn -
At day break to begin his race
Or ever to remain -

? 1955


1663


His mind of man, a secret makes
I meet him with a start
He carries a circumference
In which I have no part -

Or even if I deem I do
He otherwise may know
Impregnable to inquest
However neighborly -

? 1914


1664


I did not reach Thee
But my feet slip nearer every day
Three Rivers and a Hill to cross
One Desert and a Sea
I shall not count the journey one
When I am telling thee.

Two deserts, but the Year is cold
So that will help the sand
One desert crossed -
The second one
Will feel as cool as land
Sahara is too little price
To pay for thy Right hand.

The Sea comes last - Step merry, feet,
So short we have to go -
To play together we are prone,
But we must labor now,
The last shall be the lightest load
That we have had to draw.

The Sun goes crooked -
That is night
Before he makes the bend
We must have passed the Middle Sea -
Almost we wish the End
Were further off -
Too great it seems
So near the Whole to stand.

We step like Plush,
We stand like snow,
The waters murmur new.
Three rivers and the Hill are passed -
Two deserts and the sea!
Now Death usurps my Premium
And gets the look at Thee.

? 1914


1665


I know of people in the Grave
Who would be very glad
To know the news I know tonight
If they the chance had had.
'Tis this expands the least event
And swells the scantest deed -
My right to walk upon the Earth
If they this moment had.

? 1955


1666


I see thee clearer for the Grave
That took thy face between
No Mirror could illumine thee
Like that impassive stone -

I know thee better for the Act
That made thee first unknown
The stature of the empty nest
Attests the Bird that's gone.

? 1955


1667


I watched her face to see which way
She took the awful news -
Whether she died before she heard
Or in protracted bruise
Remained a few slow years with us -
Each heavier than the last -
A further afternoon to fall,
As Flower at fall of Frost.

? 1914


1668


If I could tell how glad, I was
I should not be so glad -
But when I cannot make the Force,
Nor mould it into Word,
I know it is a sign
That new Dilemma be
From mathematics further off
Than from Eternity.

? 1914


1669


In snow thou comest -
Thou shalt go with the resuming ground,
The sweet derision of the crow,
And Glee's advancing sound.

In fear thou comest -
Thou shalt go at such a gait of joy
That man anew embark to live
Upon the depth of thee.

? 1955


1670


In Winter in my Room
I came upon a Worm -
Pink, lank and warm -
But as he was a worm
And worms presume
Not quite with him at home -
Secured him by a string
To something neighboring
And went along.

A Trifle afterward
A thing occurred
I'd not believe it if I heard
But state with creeping blood -
A snake with mottles rare
Surveyed my chamber floor
In feature as the worm before
But ringed with power -
The very string with which
I tied him - too
When he was mean and new
That string was there -

I shrank - "How falr you are"!
Propitiation's claw -
"Afraid," he hissed
"Of me"?
"No cordiality" -
He fathomed me -
Then to a Rhythm Slim
Secreted In his Form
As Patterns swim
Projected him.

That time I flew
Both eyes hls way
Lest he pursue
Nor ever ceased to run
Till in a distant Town
Towns on from mine
I set me down
This was a dream.

? 1914


1671


Judgment is justest
When the Judged,
His action laid away,
Divested is of every Disk
But his sincerity.

Honor is then the safest hue
In a posthumous Sun -
Not any color will endure
That scrutiny can burn.

? 1955


1672


Lightly stepped a yellow star
To its lofty place -
Loosed the Moon her silver hat
From her lustral Face-
All of Evening softly lit
As an Astral Hall -
Father, I observed to Heaven,
You are punctual.

? 1914


1673


Nature can do no more
She has fulfilled her Dyes
Whatever Flower fail to come
Of other Summer days
Her crescent reimburse
If other Summers be
Nature's imposing negative
Nulls opportunity-

? 1914


1674


Not any sunny tone
From any fervent zone
Find entrance there -
Better a grave of Balm
Toward human nature's home -
And Robins near -
Than a stupendous Tomb
Proclaiming to the Gloom
How dead we are -

? 1955


1675


Of this is Day composed
A morning and a noon
A Revelry unspeakable
And then a gay unknown
Whose Pomps allure and spurn
And dower and deprive
And penury for Glory
Remedilessly leave.

? 1914


1676


Of Yellow was the outer Sky
In Yellower Yellow hewn
Till Saffron in Vermilion slid
Whose seam could not be shewn.

? 1955


1677


On my volcano grows the Grass
A meditative spot -
An acre for a Bird to choose
Would be the General thought -

How red the Fire rocks below -
How insecure the sod
Did I disclose
Would populate with awe my solitude.

? 1914


1678


Peril as a Possession
'Tis Good to bear
Danger disintegrates Satiety
There's Basis there -
Begets an awe
That searches Human Nature's creases
As clean as Fire.

? 1914


1679


Rather arid delight
If Contentment accrue
Make an abstemious Ecstasy
Not so good as joy -

But Rapture's Expense
Must not be incurred
With a tomorrow knocking
And the Rent unpaid -

? 1955


1680


Sometimes with the Heart
Seldom with the Soul
Scarcer once with the Might
Few - love at all.

? 1915


1681


Speech is one symptom of Affection
And Silence one -
The perfectest communication
Is heard of none -

Exists and its indorsement
Is had within -
Behold, said the Apostle,
Yet had not seen!

? 1955


1682


Summer begins to have the look
Peruser of enchanting Book
Reluctantly but sure perceives
A gain upon the backward leaves -

Autumn begins to be inferred
By millinery of the cloud
Or deeper color in the shawl
That wraps the everlasting hill

The eye begins its avarice
A meditation chastens speech
Some Dyer of a distant tree
Resumes his gaudy industry.

Conclusion is the course of All
At most to be perennial
And then elude stability
Recalls to immortality.

? 1914


1683


That she forgot me was the least
I felt it second pain
That I was worthy to forget
Was most I thought upon.

Faithful was all that I could boast
But Constancy became
To her, by her innominate,
A something like a shame.

? 1914


1684


The Blunder is in estimate.
Eternity is there
We say, as of a Station -
Meanwhile he is so near
He joins me in my Ramble -
Divides abode with me -
No Friend have I that so persists
As this Eternity.

? I914


1685


The butterfly obtains
But little sympathy
Though favorably mentioned
In Entomology -

Because he travels freely
And wears a proper coat
The circumspect are certain
That he is dissolute -

Had he the homely scutcheon
Of modest Industry
'T were fitter certifying
For Immortality -

? 1914


1686


The event was directly behind Him
Yet He did not guess
Fitted itself to Himself like a Robe
Relished His ignorance.
Motioned itself to drill
Loaded and Levelled
And let His Flesh
Centuries from His soul.

? 1955


1687


The gleam of an heroic Act
Such strange illumination
The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination.

? 1914


1688


The Hills erect their Purple Heads
The Rivers lean to see
Yet Man has not of all the Throng
A Curiosity.

? 1914


1689


The look of thee, what is it like
Hast thou a hand or Foot
Or Mansion of Identity
And what is thy Pursuit?

Thy fellows are they realms or Themes
Hast thou Delight or Fear
Or Longing - and is that for us
Or values more severe?

Let change transfuse all other Traits
Enact all other Blame
But deign this least certificate -
That thou shalt be the same.

? 1914


1690


The ones that disappeared are back
The Phoebe and the Crow
Precisely as in March is heard
The curtness of the Jay -
Be this an Autumn or a Spring
My wisdom loses way
One side of me the nuts are ripe
The other side is May.

? 1914


1691


The overtakelessness of those
Who have accomplished Death
Majestic is to me beyond
The majesties of Earth.

The soul her "Not at Home "
Inscribes upon the flesh -
And takes her fair aerial gait
Beyond the hope of touch.

1914


1692


The right to perish might be thought
An undisputed right -
Attempt it, and the Universe
Upon the opposite
Will concentrate its officers -
You cannot even die
But nature and mankind must pause
To pay you scrutiny.

? 1914


1693


The Sun retired to a cloud
A Woman's shawl as big -
And then he sulked in mercury
Upon a scarlet log -
The drops on Nature's forehead stood
Home flew the loaded bees -
The South unrolled a purple fan
And handed to the trees.

? 1955


1694


The wind drew off
Like hungry dogs
Defeated of a bone-
Through fissures in
Volcanic cloud
The yellow lightning shone -
The trees held up
Their mangled limbs
Like animals in pain -
When Nature falls upon herself
Beware an Austrian.

? 1914


1695


There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder slte
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself -
Finite infinity.

? 1914


1696


These are the days that Reindeer love
And pranks the Northern star -
This is the Sun's objective,
And Finland of the Year.

? 1914


1697


They talk as slow as Legends grow
No mushroom is their mind
But foliage of sterility
Too stolid for the wind -
They laugh as wise as Plots of Wit
Predestined to unfold
The point with bland prevision
Portentously untold.

? 1955


1698


'Tis easier to pity those when dead
That which pity previous
Would have saved -
A Tragedy enacted
Secures Applause
That Tragedy enacting
Too seldom does.

? 1955


1699


To do a magnanimous thing
And take oneself by surprise
If oneself is not in the habit of him
Is precisely the finest of Joys -
Not to do a magnanimous thing
Notwithstanding it never be known
Notwithstanding it cost us existence once
Is Rapture herself spurn -

? 1955


1700


To tell the Beauty would decrease
To state the Spell demean -
There is a syllable-less Sea
Of which it is the sign -
My will endeavors for its word
And fails, but entertains
A Rapture as of Legacies -
Of introspective Mines -

? 1914


1701


To their apartment deep
No ribaldry may creep
Untumbled this abode
By any man but God -

? 1914


1702


Today or this noon
She dwelt so close
I almost touched her -
Tonight she lies
Past neighborhood
And bough and steeple,
Now past surmise.

? 1914


1703


'Twas comfort in her Dying Room
To hear the living Clock -
A short relief to have the wind
Walk boldly up and knock -
Diversion from the Dying Theme
To hear the children play -
But wrong the more
That these could live
And this of ours must die.

? 1914


1704


Unto a broken heart
No other one may go
Without the high prerogative
Itself hath suffered too.

? 1955


1705


Volcanoes be in Sicily
And South America
I judge from my Geography -
Volcanos nearer here
A Lava step at any time
Am I inclined to climb -
A Crater I may contemplate
Vesuvius at Home.

? 1914


1706


When we have ceased to care
The Gift is given
For which we gave the Earth
And mortgaged Heaven
But so declined in worth
'Tis ignominy now
To look upon -

? 1915


1707


Winter under cultivation
Is as arable as Spring.

? 1955


1708


Witchcraft has not a Pedigree
'Tis early as our Breath
And mourners meet it going out
The moment of our death -

? 1914


1709


With sweetness unabated
Informed the hour had come
With no remiss of triumph
The autumn started home

Her home to be with Nature
As competition done
By influential kinsmen
Invited to return -

In supplements of Purple
An adequate repast
In heavenly reviewing
Her residue be past -

? 1955


1710


A curious Cloud surprised the Sky,
'Twas like a sheet with Horns;
The sheet was Blue -
The Antlers Gray -
It almost touched the Lawns.

So low it leaned - then statelier drew -
And trailed like robes away,
A Queen adown a satin aisle
Had not the majesty.

? 1945


1711


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.

? 1896


1712


A Pit - but Heaven over it -
And Heaven beside, and Heaven abroad,
And yet a Pit -
With Heaven over It.

To stir would be to slip -
To look would be to drop -
To dream - to sap the Prop
That holds my chances up.
Ah! Pit! with Heaven over it!

The depth is all my thought -
I dare not ask my feet -
'Twould start us where we sit
So straight you'd scarce suspect
It was a Pit - with fathoms under it -
Its Circuit just the same.
Seed - summer - tomb -
Whose Doom to whom?

? 1945


1713


As subtle as tomorrow
That never came,
A warrant, a conviction,
Yet but a name.

? 1945


1714


By a departing light
We see acuter, quite,
Than by a wick that stays.
There's something in the flight
That clarifies the sight
And decks the rays.

? 1945


1715


Consulting summer's clock,
But half the hours remain.
I ascertain it with a shock-
I shall not look again.
The second half of joy
Is shorter than the first.
The truth I do not dare to know
I muffle with a Jest.

? 1945


1716


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 saw,
Baffle, if it cost you
Everything you are.

Then, if it have burrowed
Out of reach of skill -
Wring the tree and leave it,
'Tis the vermin's will.

? 1896


1717


Did life's penurious length
Italicize its sweetness,
The men that daily live
Would stand so deep in joy
That it would clog the cogs
Of that revolving reason
Whose esoteric belt
Protects our sanity.

? 1945


1718


Drowning is not so pitiful
As the attempt to rise.
Three times, 'tis 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.

? 1896


1719


God is indeed a jealous God-
He cannot bear to see
That we had rather not with Him
But with each other play.

? 1945


1720


Had I known that the first was the last
I should have kept it longer.
Had I known that the last was the first
I should have drunk it stronger.
Cup, it was your fault,
Lip was not the liar
No, lip, it was yours,
Bliss was most to blame.

? 1945


1721


He was my host - he was my guest,
I never to this day
If I invited him could tell,
Or he invited me.

So infinite our intercourse
So intimate, indeed,
Analysis as capsule seemed
To keeper of the seed.

? 1945


1722


Her face was in a bed of hair,
Like flowers in a plot -
Her hand was whiter than the sperm
That feeds the sacred light.
Her tongue more tender than the tune
That totters in the leaves -
Who hears may be incredulous,
Who witnesses, believes.

? 1945


1723


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 subsequently learned
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!

? 1896


1724


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.
Extinct be every hum
In deference to him
Whose garden wrestles with the dew,
At daybreak overcome!

? 1896


1725


I took one Draught of Life -
I'll tell you what I paid -
Precisely an existence -
The market price, they said.

They weighed me, Dust by Dust -
They balanced Film with Film,
Then handed me my Being's worth -
A single Dram of Heaven!

? 1925


1726


If all the griefs I am to have
Would only come today,
I am so happy I believe
They'd laugh and run away

If all the joys I am to have
Would only come today,
They could not be so big as this
That happens to me now.

? 1945


1727


If ever the lid gets off my head
And lets the brain away
The fellow will go where he belonged -
Without a hint from me,

And the world - if the world be looking on -
Will see how far from home
It is possible for sense to live
The soul there - all the time.

? 1945


1728


Is Immortality a bane
That men are so oppressed?

? 1945


1729


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.

? 1896


1730


"Lethe" in my flower,
Of which they who drink
In the fadeless orchards
Hear the bobolink!

Merely flake or petal
As the Eye beholds
Jupiter! my father!
I perceive the rose!

? 1945


1731


Love can do all but raise the Dead
I doubt if even that
From such a giant were withheld
Were flesh equivalent

But love is tired and must sleep,
And hungry and must graze
And so abets the shining Fleet
Till it is out of gaze.

? 1945


1732


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.

? 1896


1733


No man saw awe, nor to his house
Admitted he a man
Though by his awful residence
Has human nature been.

Not deeming of his dread abode
Till laboring to flee
A grasp on comprehension laid
Detained vitality.

Returning is a different route
The Spirit could not show
For breathing is the only work
To be enacted now.

"Am not consumed," old Moses wrote,
"Yet saw him face to face" -
That very physiognomy
I am convinced was this.

? 1945


1734


Oh, honey of an hour,
I never knew thy power,
Prohibit me
Till my minutest dower,
My unfrequented flower,
Deserving be.

? 1945


1735


One crown that no one seeks
And yet the highest head
Its isolatlon coveted
Its stigma deified
While Pontius Pilate lives
In whatsoever hell
That coronation pierces him
He recollects it well.

? 1945


1736


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.

Thou can'st not boast, like Jesus, drunken without companion
Was the strong cup of anguish brewed for the Nazarene

Thou can'st not pierce tradition with the peerless puncture,
See! I usurped thy crucifix to honor mine!

? 1947


1737


Rearrange a "Wife's" affection!
When they dislocate my Brain!
Amputate my freckled Bosom!
Make me bearded like a man!

Blush, my spirit, in thy Fastness -
Blush, my unacknowledged clay -
Seven years of troth have taught thee
More than Wifehood ever may!

Love that never leaped its socket -
Trust entrenched in narrow pain -
Constancy thro' fire - awarded -
Anguish - bare of anodyne!

Burden - borne so far triumphant -
None suspect me of the crown,
For I wear the "Thorns" till Sunset-
Then - my Diadem put on.

Big my Secret but it's bandaged -
It will never get away
Till the Day Its Weary Keeper
Leads it through the Grave to thee.

? 1945


1738


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.

? 1896


1739


Some say goodnight - at night -
I say goodnight by day -
Good-bye - the Going utter me -
Goodnight, I still reply -

For parting, that is night,
And presence, simply dawn -
Itself, the purple on the height
Denominated morn.

? 1929


1740


Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
Until we meet a snake;
'Tis 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.

? 1896


1741


That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet.
Believing what we don't believe
Does not exhilarate.

That if it be, it be at best
An ablative estate -
This instigates an appetite
Precisely opposite.

? 1945


1742


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.

? 1896


1743


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.

? 1896


1744


The joy that has no stern nor core,
Nor seed that we can sow,
Is edible to longing,
But ablative to show.

By fundamental palates
Those products are preferred
Impregnable to transit
And patented by pod.

? 1945


1745


The mob within the heart
Police cannot suppress
The riot given at the first
Is authorized as peace

Uncertified of scene
Or signified of sound
But growing like a hurricane
In a congenial ground.

? 1945


1746


The most important population
Unnoticed dwell,
They have a heaven each instant
Not any hell.

Their names, unless you know them,
'Twere useless tell.
Of bumble-bees and other nations
The grass is full.

? 1945


1747


The parasol is the umbrella's daughter,
And associates with a fan
While her father abuts the tempest
And abridges the rain.

The former assists a siren
In her serene display;
But her father is borne and honored,
And borrowed to this day.

? 1945


1748


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.

? 1896


1749


The waters chased him as he fled,
Not daring look behind -
A billow whispered in his Ear,
"Come home with me, my friend-
My parlor is of shriven glass,
My pantry has a fish
For every palate in the Year" -
To this revolting bliss
The object floating at his side
Made no distinct reply

? 1945


1750


The words the happy say
Are paltry melody
But those the silent feel
Are beautiful -

? 1945


1751


There comes an hour when begging stops,
When the long interceding lips
Perceive their prayer is vain.
"Thou shalt not" is a kinder sword
Than from a disappointing God
"Disciple, call again."

? 1945


1752


This docile one inter
While we who dare to live
Arraign the sunny brevity
That sparkled to the Grave

On her departing span
No wilderness remain
As dauntless in the House of Death
As if it were her own -

? 1945


1753


Through those old Grounds of memory,
The sauntering alone
Is a divine intemperance
A prudent man would shun.
Of liquors that are vended
'Tis easy to beware
But statutes do not meddle
With the internal bar
Pernicious as the sunset
Permitting to pursue
But impotent to gather,
The tranquil perfidy
Alloys our firmer moments
With that severest gold
Convenient to the longing
But otherwise withheld.

? 1945


1754


To lose thee - sweeter than to gain
All other hearts I knew.
'Tis 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.

? 1896


1755


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.

? 1896


1756


'Twas here my summer paused
What ripeness after then
To other scene or other soul
My sentence had begun.

To winter to remove
With winter to abide
Go manacle your icicle
Against your Tropic Bride.

? 1945


1757


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.
"'Twas all I had," she stricken gasped -
Oh, what a livid boon!

? 1896


1758


Where every bird is bold to go
And bees abashless play,
The foreigner before he knocks
Must thrust the tears away.

? 1896


1759


Which misses most,
The hand that tends,
Or heart so gently borne,
'Tis twice as heavy as it was
Because the hand is gone?

Which blesses most,
The lip that can,
Or that that went to sleep
With "if I could" endeavoring
Without the strength to shape?

? 1945


1760


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

C. 1882 1890


1761


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.

? 1890


1762


Were nature mortal lady
Who had so little time
To pack her trunk and order
The great exchange of clime-

How rapid, how momentous -
What exigencies were -
But nature will be ready
And have an hour to spare.

To make some trifle fairer
That was too fair before -
Enchanting by remaining,
And by departure more.


1763


Fame is a bee.
It has a song -
It has a sting -
Ah, too, it has a wing.

? 1898


1764


The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows, -
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night's delicious close.

Between the March and April line -
That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
Almost too heavenly near.

It makes us think of all the dead
That sauntered with us here,
By separation's sorcery
Made cruelly more dear.

It makes us think of what we had,
And what we now deplore.
We almost wish those siren throats
Would go and sing no more.

An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear,
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.

? 1898


1765


That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough, the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove

? 1914


1766


Those final Creatures, - who they are -
That, faithful to the close,
Administer her ecstasy,
But just the Summer knows.

? 1914


1767


Sweet hours have perished here;
This is a mighty room,
Within its precincts hopes have played, -
Now shadows in the tomb.

? 1924


1768


Lad of Athens, faithful be
To Thyself,
And Mystery -
All the rest is Perjury

C. 1883 1931


1769


The longest day that God appoints
Will finish with the sun.
Anguish can travel to its stake,
And then it must return.

? 1894


1770


Experiment escorts us last -
His pungent company
Will not allow an Axiom
An Opportunity


C. 1870 1945


1771


How fleet - how indiscreet an one -
How always wrong is Love -
The joyful little Deity
We are not scourged to serve -

C. 1881 1945


1772


Let me not thirst with this Hock at my Lip,
Nor beg, with Domains in my Pocket-

C. 1881 1945


1773


The Summer that we did not prize,
Her treasures were so easy
Instructs us by departing now
And recognition lazy -

Bestirs itself - puts on its Coat,
And scans with fatal promptness
For Trains that moment out of sight,
Unconscious of his smartness.

C. 1883 1945


1774


Too happy Time dissolves itself
And leaves no remnant by -
Tis Anguish not a Feather hath
Or too much weight to fly -

C. 1870 1945


1775


The earth has many keys.
Where melody is not
Is the unknown peninsula.
Beauty is nature's fact.

But witness for her land,
And witness for her sea,
The cricket is her utmost
Of elegy to me.

? 1945