And visit only where I liked,
And no man visit me,
And flirt all day with buttercups,
And marry whom I may,
And dwell a little everywhere,
Or better, run away
With no police to follow,
Or chase me if I do,
Till I should jump peninsulas
To get away from you, --
I said, but just to be a bee
Upon a raft of air,
And row in nowhere all day long,
And anchor off the bar,--
What liberty! So captives deem
Who tight in dungeons are.
XXI. THE MOON.
THE moon was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.
Her forehead is of amplest blond;
Her cheek like beryl stone;
Her eye unto the sumtner dew
The likest I have known.
Her lips of amber never part;
But what must be the smile
Upon her friend she could bestow
Were such her silver will!
And what a privilege to be
But the remotest star!
For certainly her way might pass
Beside your twinkling door.
Her bonnet is the firmament,
The universe her shoe,
The stars the trinkets at her belt,
Her dimities of blue.
XXII. THE BAT.
THE bat is dun with wrinkled wings
Like fallow article,
And not a song pervades his lips,
Or none perceptible.
His small umbrella, quaintly halved,
Describing in the air
An arc alike inscrutable, --
Elate philosopher!
Deputed from what firmament
Of what astute abode,
Empowered with what malevolence
Auspiciously withheld.
To his adroit Creator
Ascribe no less the praise;
Beneficent, believe me,
His eccentricities.
XXIII. THE BALLOON.
YOU've seen balloons set, haven't you?
So stately they ascend
It is as swans discarded you
For duties diamond.
Their liquid feet go softly out
Upon a sea of blond;
They spurn the air as 't were too mean
For creatures so renowned.
Their ribbons just beyond the eye,
They struggle some for breath,
And yet the crowd applauds below;
They would not encore death.
The gilded creature strains and spins,
Trips frantic in a tree,
Tears open her imperial veins
And tumbles in the sea.
The crowd retire with an oath
The dust in streets goes down,
And clerks in counting-rooms observe,
''T was only a balloon.'
XXIV. EVENING.
THE cricket sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
Their seam the day upon.
The low grass loaded with the dew,
The twilight stood as strangers do
With hat in hand, polite and new,
To stay as if, or go.
A vastness, as a neighbor, came, --
A wisdom without face or name,
A peace, as hemispheres at home, --
And so the night became.
XXV. COCOON.
DRAB habitation of whom?
Tabernacle or tomb,
Or dome of worm,
Or porch of gnome,
Or some elf's catacomb?
XXVI. SUNSET.
A SLOOP of amber slips away
Upon an ether sea,
And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
The son of ecstasy.
XXVII. AURORA.
OF bronze and blaze
The north, to-night!
So adequate its forms,
So preconcerted with itself,
So distant to alarms, --
An unconcern so sovereign
To universe, or me,
It paints my simple spirit
With tints of majesty,
Till I take vaster attitudes,
And strut upon my stem,
Disdaining men and oxygen,
For arrogance of them.
My splendors are menagerie;
But their competeless show
Will entertain the centuries
When I am, long ago,
An island in dishonored grass,
Whom none but daisies know.
XXVIII. THE COMING OF NIGHT.
HOW the old mountains drip with sunset,
And the brake of dun!
How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
By the wizard sun!
How the old steeples hand the scarlet,
Till the ball is full, --
Have I the lip of the flamingo
That I dare to tell?
Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,
Touching all the grass
With a departing, sapphire feature,
As if a duchess pass!
How a small dusk crawls on the village
Till the houses blot;
And the odd flambeaux no men carry
Glimmer on the spot!
Now it is night in nest and kennel,
And where was the wood,
Just a dome of abyss is nodding
Into solitude! --
These are the visions baffled Guido;
Titian never told;
Domenichino dropped the pencil,
Powerless to unfold.
XXIX. AFTERMATH.
THE murmuring of bees has ceased;
But murmuring of some
Posterior, prophetic,
Has simultaneous come, --
The lower metres of the year,
When nature's laugh is done, --
The Revelations of the book
Whose Genesis is June.
IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.
I.
THIS world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
But positive, as sound.
It beckons and it baffles;
Philosophies don't know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
Sagacity must go.
To guess it puzzles scholars;
To gain it, men have shown
Contempt of generations,
And crucifixion known.
II.
WE learn in the retreating
How vast an one
Was recently among us.
A perished sun
Endears in the departure
How doubly more
Than all the golden presence
It was before!
III.
THEY say that 'time assuages,' --
Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
As sinews do, with age.
Time is a test of trouble,
But not a remedy.
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no malady.
IV.
WE cover thee, sweet face.
Not that we tire of thee,
But that thyself fatigue of us;
Remember, as thou flee,
We follow thee until
Thou notice us no more,
And then, reluctant, turn away
To con thee o'er and o'er,
And blame the scanty love
We were content to show,
Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold
If thou would'st take it now.
V. ENDING.
THAT is solemn we have ended, -
-
Be it but a play,
Or a glee among the garrets,
Or a holiday,
Or a leaving home; or later,
Parting with a world
We have understood, for better
Still it be unfurled.
VI.
THE stimulus, beyond the grave
His countenance to see,
Supports me like imperial drams
Afforded royally.
VII.
GIVEN in marriage unto thee,
Oh, thou celestial host!
Bride of the Father and the Son,
Bride of the Holy Ghost!
Other betrothal shall dissolve,
Wedlock of will decay;
Only the keeper of this seal
Conquers mortality.
VIII.
THAT such have died enables us
The tranquiller to die;
That such have lived, certificate
For immortality.
IX.
THEY won't frown always, -- some sweet day
When I forget to tease,
They'll recollect how cold I looked,
And how I just said 'please.'
Then they will hasten to the door
To call the little child,
Who cannot thank them, for the ice
That on her lisping piled.
X. IMMORTALITY.
IT is an honorable thought,
And makes one lift one's hat,
As one encountered gentlefolk
Upon a daily street,
That we're immortal place,
Though pyramids decay,
And kingdoms, like the orchard,
Flit russetly away.
XI.
THE distance that the dead have gone
Does not at first appear;
Their coming back seems possible
For many an ardent year.
And then, that we have followed them
We more than half suspect,
So intimate have we become
With their dear retrospect.
XII.
HOW dare the robins sing,
When men and women hear
Who since they went to their account
Have settled with the year! --
Paid all that life had earned
In one consummate bill,
And now, what life or death can do
Is immaterial.
Insulting is the sun
To him whose mortal light,
Beguiled of immortality,
Bequeaths him to the night.
In deference to him
Extinct be every hum,
Whose garden wrestles with the dew,
At daybreak overcome!
XIII. DEATH.
DEATH is like the insect
Menacing the tree,
Competent to kill it,
But decoyed may be.
Bait it with the balsam,
Seek it with the knife,
Baffle, if it cost you
Everything in life.
Then, if it have burrowed
Out of reach of skill,
Ring the tree and leave it, --
'T is the vermin's will.
XIV. UNWARNED.
'T IS sunrise, little maid, hast thou
No station in the day?
'T was not thy wont to hinder so, --
Retrieve thine industry.
'T is noon, my little maid, alas!
And art thou sleeping yet?
The lily waiting to be wed,
The bee, dost thou forget?
My little maid, 't is night; alas,
That night should be to thee
Instead of morning! Hadst thou broached
Thy little plan to me,
Dissuade thee if I could not, sweet,
I might have aided thee.
XV.
EACH that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.
XVI.
NOT any higher stands the grave
For heroes than for men;
Not any nearer for the child
Than numb three-score and ten.
This latest leisure equal lulls
The beggar and his queen;
Propitiate this democrat
By summer's gracious mien.
XVII. ASLEEP.
AS far from pity as complaint,
As cool to speech as stone,
As numb to revelation
As if my trade were bone.
As far from time as history,
As near yourself to-day
Or sunset's yellow play
To eyelids in the sepulchre.
How still the dancer lies,
While color's revelations break,
And blaze the butterflies!
XVIII. THE SPIRIT.
'T IS whiter than an Indian pipe,
'T is dimmer than a lace;
No stature has it, like a fog,
When you approach the place.
Not any voice denotes it here,
Or intimates it there;
A spirit, how doth it accost?
What customs hath the air?
This limitless hyperbole
Each one of us shall be;
'T is drama, if (hypothesis)
It be not tragedy!
XIX. THE MONUMENT.
SHE laid her docile crescent down,
And this mechanic stone
Still states, to dates that have forgot,
The news that she is gone.
So constant to its stolid trust,
The shaft that never knew,
It shames the constancy that fled
Before its emblem flew.
XX.
BLESS God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast;
Grant, God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest.
Please God, might I behold him
In epauletted white,
I should not fear the foe then,
I should not fear the fight.
XXI.
IMMORTAL is an ample word
When what we need is by,
But when it leaves us for a time,
'T is a necessity.
Of heaven above the firmest proof
We fundamental know,
Except for its marauding hand,
It had been heaven below.
XXII.
WHERE every bird is bold to go,
And bees abashless play,
The foreigner before he knocks
Must thrust the tears away.
XXIII.
THE grave my little cottage is,
Where, keeping house for thee,
I make my parlor orderly,
And lay the marble tea,
For two divided, briefly,
A cycle, it may be,
Till everlasting life unite
In strong society.
XXIV.
THIS was in the white of the year,
That was in the green,
Drifts were as difficult then to think
As daisies now to be seen.
Looking back is best that is left,
Or if it be before,
Retrospection is prospect's half,
Sometimes almost more.
XXV.
SWEET hours have perished here;
This is a mighty room;
Within its precincts hopes have played, --
Now shadows in the tomb.
XXVI.
ME! Come! My dazzled face
In such a shining place!
Me! Hear! My foreign ear
The sounds of welcome near!
The saints shall meet
Our bashful feet.
My holiday shall be
That they remember me;
My paradise, the fame
That they pronounce my name.
XXVII. INVISIBLE.
FROM us she wandered now a year,
Her tarrying unknown;
If wilderness prevent her feet,
Or that ethereal zone
No eye hath seen and lived,
We ignorant must be.
We only know what time of year
We took the mystery.
XXVIII.
I WISH I knew that woman's name,
So, when she comes this way,
To hold my life, and hold my ears,
For fear I hear her say
She's 'sorry I am dead,' again,
Just when the grave and I
Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, --
Our only lullaby.
XXIX. TRYING TO FORGET.
BEREAVED of all, I went abroad,