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This is my letter to the world, That never wrote to me, — The simple news that Nature told, With tender majesty. Her message is committed To hands I cannot see; For love of her, sweet countrymen, Judge tenderly of me!
ALMOST! Within my reach! I could have touched! I might have chanced that way! Soft sauntered through the village, Sauntered as soft away! So unsuspected violets Within the fields lie low, Too late for striving fingers That passed, an hour ago.
A wounded deer leaps highest, I've heard the hunter tell; 'T is but the ecstasy of death, And then the brake is still. The smitten rock that gushes, The trampled steel that springs; A cheek is always redder Just where the hectic stings! Mirth is the mail of anguish, In which it cautions arm, Lest anybody spy the blood And "You're hurt" exclaim!
IN A LIBRARY. A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think, His venerable hand to take, And warming in our own, A passage back, or two, to make To times when he was young. His quaint opinions to inspect, His knowledge to unfold On what concerns our mutual mind, The literature of old; What interested scholars most, What competitions ran When Plato was a certainty. And Sophocles a man; When Sappho was a living girl, And Beatrice wore The gown that Dante deified. Facts, centuries before, He traverses familiar, As one
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THE LONELY HOUSE.
DAWN. When night is almost done, And sunrise grows so near That we can touch the spaces, It 's time to smooth the hair And get the dimples ready, And wonder we could care For that old faded midnight That frightened but an hour.
Pain has an element of blank; It cannot recollect When it began, or if there were A day when it was not. It has no future but itself, Its infinite realms contain Its past, enlightened to perceive New periods of pain.
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!
II. LOVE.
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!
THE OUTLET. My river runs to thee: Blue sea, wilt welcome me? My river waits reply. Oh sea, look graciously! I'll fetch thee brooks From spotted nooks, — Say, sea, Take me!
She rose to his requirement, dropped The playthings of her life To take the honorable work Of woman and of wife. If aught she missed in her new day Of amplitude, or awe, Or first prospective, or the gold In using wore away, It lay unmentioned, as the sea Develops pearl and weed, But only to himself is known The fathoms they abide.
III. NATURE.
New feet within my garden go, New fingers stir the sod; A troubadour upon the elm Betrays the solitude. New children play upon the green, New weary sleep below; And still the pensive spring returns, And still the punctual snow!
Pink, small, and punctual, Aromatic, low, Covert in April, Candid in May, Dear to the moss, Known by the knoll, Next to the robin In every human soul. Bold little beauty, Bedecked with thee, Nature forswears Antiquity.
IV.
The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy.
THE SEA OF SUNSET. This is the land the sunset washes, These are the banks of the Yellow Sea; Where it rose, or whither it rushes, These are the western mystery! Night after night her purple traffic Strews the landing with opal bales; Merchantmen poise upon horizons, Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.
DEATH AND LIFE. Apparently with no surprise To any happy flower, The frost beheads it at its play In accidental power. The blond assassin passes on, The sun proceeds unmoved To measure off another day For an approving God.
FROM THE CHRYSALIS. My cocoon tightens, colors tease, I'm feeling for the air; A dim capacity for wings Degrades the dress I wear. A power of butterfly must be The aptitude to fly, Meadows of majesty concedes And easy sweeps of sky. So I must baffle at the hint And cipher at the sign, And make much blunder, if at last I take the clew divine.
VIII. Look back on time with kindly eyes, He doubtless did his best; How softly sinks his trembling sun In human nature's west!
XVIII. PLAYMATES. God permits industrious angels Afternoons to play. I met one, — forgot my school-mates, All, for him, straightway. God calls home the angels promptly At the setting sun; I missed mine. How dreary marbles, After playing Crown!
XXIV. Afraid? Of whom am I afraid? Not death; for who is he? The porter of my father's lodge As much abasheth me. Of life? 'T were odd I fear a thing That comprehendeth me In one or more existences At Deity's decree. Of resurrection? Is the east Afraid to trust the morn With her fastidious forehead? As soon impeach my crown!
THE CHARIOT. Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the school where children played, Their lessons scarcely done; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound. Since then 't is centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward
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She went as quiet as the dew From a familiar flower. Not like the dew did she return At the accustomed hour! She dropt as softly as a star From out my summer's eve; Less skilful than Leverrier It's sorer to believe!
LIFE.
I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there 's a pair of us — don't tell! They 'd banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I 've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
ESCAPE. I never hear the word "escape" Without a quicker blood, A sudden expectation, A flying attitude. I never hear of prisons broad By soldiers battered down, But I tug childish at my bars, — Only to fail again!
XVI. Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the culprit, — Life!
Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency!
CALLED BACK.
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.
Wild nights! Wild nights! Were I with thee, Wild nights should be Our luxury! Futile the winds To a heart in port, — Done with the compass, Done with the chart. Rowing in Eden! Ah! the sea! Might I but moor To-night in thee!
NATURE.
THE HUMMING-BIRD. A route of evanescence With a revolving wheel; A resonance of emerald, A rush of cochineal; And every blossom on the bush Adjusts its tumbled head, — The mail from Tunis, probably, An easy morning's ride.
SECRETS. The skies can't keep their secret! They tell it to the hills — The hills just tell the orchards — And they the daffodils! A bird, by chance, that goes that way Soft overheard the whole. If I should bribe the little bird, Who knows but she would tell? I think I won't, however, It's finer not to know; If summer were an axiom, What sorcery had snow? So keep your secret, Father! I would not, if I could, Know what the sapphire fellows do, In your new-fashioned world!
OLD-FASHIONED. Arcturus is his other name, — I'd rather call him star! It's so unkind of science To go and interfere! I pull a flower from the woods, — A monster with a glass Computes the stamens in a breath, And has her in a class. Whereas I took the butterfly Aforetime in my hat, He sits erect in cabinets, The clover-bells forgot. What once was heaven, is zenith now. Where I proposed to go When time's brief masquerade was done, Is mapped, and charted too! What if the poles should frisk about And stand upon their heads! I hope I 'm ready for the worst, Whatever prank betides! Perhaps the
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XXVII. THE SPIDER. A spider sewed at night Without a light Upon an arc of white. If ruff it was of dame Or shroud of gnome, Himself, himself inform. Of immortality His strategy Was physiognomy.
XXXI. Nature rarer uses yellow Than another hue; Saves she all of that for sunsets, — Prodigal of blue, Spending scarlet like a woman, Yellow she affords Only scantly and selectly, Like a lover's words.
WITH FLOWERS. South winds jostle them, Bumblebees come, Hover, hesitate, Drink, and are gone. Butterflies pause On their passage Cashmere; I, softly plucking, Present them here!
SUNSET. Where ships of purple gently toss On seas of daffodil, Fantastic sailors mingle, And then — the wharf is still.
THE SNOW. It sifts from leaden sieves, It powders all the wood, It fills with alabaster wool The wrinkles of the road. It makes an even face Of mountain and of plain, — Unbroken forehead from the east Unto the east again. It reaches to the fence, It wraps it, rail by rail, Till it is lost in fleeces; It flings a crystal veil On stump and stack and stem, — The summer's empty room, Acres of seams where harvests were, Recordless, but for them. It ruffles wrists of posts, As ankles of a queen, — Then stills its artisans like ghosts, Denying they have been.
IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.
II.
A death-blow is a life-blow to some Who, till they died, did not alive become; Who, had they lived, had died, but when They died, vitality begun.
XIX. I noticed people disappeared, When but a little child, — Supposed they visited remote, Or settled regions wild. Now know I they both visited And settled regions wild, But did because they died, — a fact Withheld the little child!
A COUNTRY BURIAL. Ample make this bed. Make this bed with awe; In it wait till judgment break Excellent and fair. Be its mattress straight, Be its pillow round; Let no sunrise' yellow noise Interrupt this ground.
THE FORGOTTEN GRAVE. After a hundred years Nobody knows the place, — Agony, that enacted there, Motionless as peace. Weeds triumphant ranged, Strangers strolled and spelled At the lone orthography Of the elder dead. Winds of summer fields Recollect the way, — Instinct picking up the key Dropped by memory.
XLII. Lay this laurel on the one Too intrinsic for renown. Laurel! veil your deathless tree, — Him you chasten, that is he!
