I
ADVENTURE most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be;
Attended by a Single Hound—
Its own Identity.
II
THE Soul that has a Guest,
Doth seldom go abroad,
Diviner Crowd at home
Obliterate the need,
And courtesy forbid
A Host’s departure, when
Upon Himself be visiting
The Emperor of Men!
III
EXCEPT the smaller size, no Lives are round,
These hurry to a sphere, and show, and end.
The larger, slower grow, and later hang—
The Summers of Hesperides
232
are long.
IV
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.
V
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.
VI
PERIL as a possession
’T is good to bear,
Danger disintegrates satiety;
There’s Basis there
Begets an awe,
That searches Human Nature’s creases
As clean as Fire.
VII
WHEN Etna
233
basks and purrs,
Naples is more afraid
Than when she shows her Garnet Tooth;
Security is loud.
VIII
REVERSE cannot befall that fine Prosperity
Whose sources are interior.
As soon Adversity
A diamond overtake,
In far Bolivian ground;
Misfortune hath no implement
Could mar it, if it found.
IX
TO be alive is power,
Existence in itself,
Without a further function,
Omnipotence enough.
To be alive and Will—
’T is able as a God!
The Further of ourselves be what—
Such being Finitude?
X
WITCHCRAFT has not a pedigree,
’T is early as our breath,
And mourners meet it going out
The moment of our death.
XI
EXHILARATION is the Breeze
That lifts us from the ground,
And leaves us in another place
Whose statement is not found;
Returns us not, but after time
We soberly descend,
A little newer for the term
Upon enchanted ground.
XII
NO romance sold unto,
Could so enthrall a man
As the perusal of
His individual one.
’T is fiction‘s, to dilute
To plausibility
Our novel, when ’t is small enough
To credit,—’t isn’t true!
XIII
IF what we could were what we would—
Criterion be small;
It is the Ultimate of talk
The impotence to tell.
XIV
PERCEPTION of an
Object costs
Precise the Object’s loss.
Perception in itself a gain
Replying to its price;
The Object Absolute is nought,
Perception sets it fair,
And then upbraids a Perfectness
That situates so far.
XV
No other can reduce
Our mortal consequence,
Like the remembering it be nought
A period from hence.
But contemplation for
Cotemporaneous nought
Our single competition;
Jehovah’s estimate.
XVI
THE blunder is to estimate—
“Eternity is
Then
,”
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.
XVII
MY Wheel is in the dark,—
I cannot see a spoke,
Yet know its dripping feet
Go round and round.
My foot is on the tide—
An unfrequented road,
Yet have all roads
A “clearing” at the end.
Some have resigned the Loom,
Some in the busy tomb
Find quaint employ,
Some with new, stately feet
Pass royal through the gate,
Flinging the problem back at you and I.
XVIII
THERE is another Loneliness
That many die without,
Not want or friend occasions it,
Or circumstances or lot.
But nature sometimes, sometimes thought,
And whoso it befall
Is richer than could be divulged
By mortal numeral.
XIX
SO gay a flower bereaved the mind
As if it were a woe,
Is Beauty an affliction, then?
Tradition ought to know.
XX
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.
XXI
THE missing All prevented me
From missing minor things.
If nothing larger than a World’s
Departure from a hinge,
Or Sun’s extinction be observed,
’T was not so large that I
Could lift my forehead from my work
For curiosity.
XXII
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.
XXIII
THE suburbs of a secret
A strategist should keep,
Better than on a dream intrude
To scrutinize the sleep.
XXIV
THE difference between despair
And fear, is like the one
Between the instant of a wreck,
And when the wreck has been.
The mind is smooth,—no motion—
Contented as the eye
Upon the forehead of a Bust,
That knows it cannot see.
XXV
THERE is a solitude of space,
A solitude of sea,
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be,
Compared with that profounder site,
That polar privacy,
A Soul admitted to Itself:
Finite Infinity.
XXVI
THE props assist the house
Until the house is built,
And then the props withdraw—
And adequate, erect,
The house supports itself;
Ceasing to recollect
The auger and the carpenter.
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected life,
A past of plank and nail,
And slowness,—then the scaffolds drop—
Affirming it a soul.
XXVII
THE gleam of an heroic act,
Such strange illumination—
The Possible’s slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination!
XXVIII
OF Death the sharpest function,
That, just as we discern,
The Excellence defies us;
Securest gathered then
The fruit perverse to plucking,
But leaning to the sight
With the ecstatic limit
Of unobtained Delight.
XXIX
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?
XXX
I bet with every Wind that blew, till Nature in
chagrin
Employed a
Fact
to visit me and scuttle my
Balloon!
XXXI
THE Future never spoke,
Nor will he, like the Dumb,
Reveal by sign or syllable
Of his profound To-come.
But when the news be ripe,
Presents it in the Act—
Forestalling preparation
Escape or substitute.
Indifferent to him
The Dower as the Doom,
His office but to execute
Fate’s Telegram to him.
XXXII
TWO lengths has every day,
Its absolute extent-
And area superior
By hope or heaven lent.
Eternity will be
Velocity, or pause,
At fundamental signals
From fundamental laws.
To die, is not to go—
On doom’s consummate chart
No territory new is staked,
Remain thou as thou art.
XXXIII
THE Soul’s superior instants
Occur to Her alone,
When friend and earth’s occasion
Have infinite withdrawn.
Or she, Herself, ascended
To too remote a height,
For lower recognition
Than Her Omnipotent.
This mortal abolition
Is seldom, but as fair
As Apparition—subject
To autocratic air.
Eternity’s disclosure
To favorites, a few,
Of the Colossal substance
Of immortality.
XXXIV
NATURE is what we see,
The Hill, the Afternoon—
Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumble-bee,
Nay—Nature is Heaven.
Nature is what we hear,
The Bobolink, the Sea-
Thunder, the Cricket—
Nay,—Nature is Harmony.
Nature is what we know
But have no art to say,
So impotent our wisdom is
To Her simplicity.
XXXV
AH, Teneriffe!
234
Retreating Mountain!
Purples of Ages pause for you,
Sunset reviews her Sapphire Regiment,
Day drops you her red Adieu!
Still, clad in your mail of ices,
Thigh of granite and thew
235
of steel—
Heedless, alike, of pomp or parting,
Ah, Teneriffe!
I’m kneeling still.
XXXVI
SHE died at play,
Gambolled away
Her lease of spotted hours,
Then sank as gaily as a Turk
Upon a couch of flowers.
Her ghost strolled softly o‘er the hill
Yesterday and today,
Her vestments as the silver fleece,
Her countenance as spray.
XXXVII
“MORNING” means “Milking” to the Farmer
Dawn to the Apennines-
Dice to the Maid.
“Morning” means just Chance to the Lover—
Just Revelation to the Beloved.
Epicures
236
date a breakfast by it!
Heroes a battle,
The Miller a flood,
Faint-going eyes their lapse
From sighing,
Faith, the Experiment of our Lord!
XXXVIII
A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown,
Who ponders this tremendous scene—
This whole experiment of green,
As if it were his own!
XXXIX
I can’t tell you, but you feel it—
Nor can you tell me,
Saints with vanished slate and pencil
Solve our April day.
Sweeter than a vanished Frolic
From a vanished Green!
Swifter than the hoofs of Horsemen
Round a ledge of Dream!
Modest, let us walk among it.
With our “faces veiled”,
As they say polite Archangels
Do, in meeting God.
237
Not for me to prate about it,
Not for you to say
To some fashionable Lady—
“Charming April Day!”
Rather Heaven’s “Peter Parley”,
238
By which, Children—slow—
To sublimer recitations
Are prepared to go!
XL
SOME Days retired from the rest
In soft distinction lie,
The Day that a companion came—
Or was obliged to die.
XLI
LIKE Men and Women shadows walk
Upon the hills today,
With here and there a mighty bow,
Or trailing courtesy
To Neighbors, doubtless, of their own;
Not quickened to perceive
Minuter landscape, as Ourselves
And Boroughs where we live.
XLII
THE butterfly obtains
But little sympathy,
Though favorably mentioned
In Entomology.
239
Because he travels freely
And wears a proper coat,
The circumspect are certain
That he is dissolute.
Had he the homely scutcheon
240
of modest Industry,
’T were fitter certifying for Immortality.
XLIII
BEAUTY crowds me till I die,
Beauty, mercy have on me!
But if I expire today,
Let it be in sight of thee.
XLIV
WE spy the Forests and the Hills,
The tents to Nature’s Show,
Mistake the outside for the in
And mention what we saw.
Could Commentators on the sign
Of Nature’s Caravan
Obtain “admission,” as a child,
Some Wednesday afternoon?
XLV
I never told the buried gold
Upon the hill that lies,
I saw the sun, his plunder done,
Crouch low to guard his prize.
He stood as near, as stood you here,
A pace had been between—
Did but a snake bisect the brake,
My life had forfeit been.
That was a wondrous booty,
I hope ’t was honest gained—
Those were the finest ingots
241
That ever kissed the spade.
Whether to keep the secret—
Whether to reveal—
Whether, while I ponder
Kidd
242
may sudden sail—
Could a Shrewd advise me
We might e‘en divide—
Should a Shrewd betray me—
“Atropos”
243
decide!
XLVI
THE largest fire ever known
Occurs each afternoon,
Discovered is without surprise,
Proceeds without concern:
Consumes, and no report to men,
An Occidental town,
Rebuilt another morning
To be again burned down.
XLVII
BLOOM upon the Mountain, stated,
Blameless of a name.
Efflorescence of a Sunset-
Reproduced, the same.
Seed, had I, my purple sowing
Should endow the Day,
Not a tropic of the twilight
Show itself away.
Who for tilling, to the Mountain
Come, and disappear—
Whose be Her renown, or fading,
Witness, is not here.
While I state—the solemn petals
Far as North and East,
Far as South and West expanding,
Culminate in rest.
And the Mountain to the Evening
Fit His countenance,
Indicating by no muscle
The Experience.
XLVIII
MARCH is the month of expectation,
The things we do not know,
The Persons of prognostication
Are coming now.
We try to sham becoming firmness,
But pompous joy
Betrays us, as his first betrothal
Betrays a boy.
XLIX
THE Duties of the Wind are few—
To cast the Ships at sea,
Establish March,
The Floods escort,
And usher Liberty.
L