THE Winds drew off
Like hungry dogs
Defeated of a bone.
Through fissures in
Volcanic cloud
The yellow lightning shown.
The trees held up
Their mangled limbs
Like animals in pain,
When Nature falls
Upon herself,
Beware an Austrian!
LI
I think that the root of the Wind is Water,
It would not sound so deep
Were it a firmamental product,
Airs no Oceans keep—
Mediterranean intonations,
To a Current’s ear
There is a maritime conviction
In the atmosphere.
LII
So, from the mould,
Scarlet and gold
Many a Bulb will rise,
Hidden away cunningly
From sagacious eyes.
So, from cocoon
Many a Worm
Leap so Highland
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gay,
Peasants like me—
Peasants like thee,
Gaze perplexedly.
LIII
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.
LIV
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The figure was withdrawn.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.
LV
I send two Sunsets—
Day and I in competition ran,
I finished two, and several stars,
While He was making one.
His own is ampler—
But, as I was saying to a friend,
Mine is the more convenient
To carry in the hand.
(Sent with brilliant flowers.)
LVI
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.
LVII
THE Hills erect their purple heads,
The Rivers lean to see—
Yet Man has not, of all the throng,
A curiosity.
LVIII
LIGHTLY stepped a yellow star
To its lofty place,
Loosed the Moon her silver hat
From her lustral
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face.
All of evening softly lit
As an astral hall—
“Father,” I observed to Heaven,
“You are punctual.”
LIX
THE Moon upon her fluent route
Defiant of a road,
The stars Etruscan
246
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.
LX
LIKE some old-fashioned miracle
When Summertime is done,
Seems Summer’s recollection
And the affairs of June.
As infinite tradition
As Cinderella’s bays,
Or little John
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of Lincoln Green,
Or Bluebeard‘s
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galleries.
Her Bees have a fictitious hum,
Her Blossoms, like a dream,
Elate—until we almost weep
So plausible they seem.
Her Memories like strains—review—
When Orchestra is dumb,
The Violin in balze
249
replaced
And Ear and Heaven numb.
LXI
GLOWING is her Bonnet,
Glowing is her Cheek,
Glowing is her Kirtle,
250
Yet she cannot speak!
Better, as the Daisy
From the Summer hill,
Vanish unrecorded
Save by tearful Rill,
251
Save by loving Sunrise
Looking for her face,
Save by feet unnumbered
Pausing at the place!
LXII
FOREVER cherished be the tree,
Whose apple Winter warm,
Enticed to breakfast from the sky
Two Gabriels yestermorn;
They registered in Nature’s book
As Robin—Sire and Son,
But angels have that modest way
To screen them from renown.
LXIII
THE Ones that disappeared are back,
The Phoebe
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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.
LXIV
THOSE final Creatures,—who they are—
That, faithful to the close,
Administer her ecstasy,
But just the Summer knows.
LXV
SUMMER begins to have the look,
Peruserof enchanting Book
253
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,
Almost
to be perennial,
And then elude stability
Recalls to immortality.
LXVI
A prompt, executive Bird is the Jay,
Bold as a Bailiff’s hymn,
Brittle and brief in quality—
Warrant in every line;
Sitting a bough like a Brigadier,
Confident and straight,
Much is the mien
Of him in March
As a Magistrate.
LXVII
LIKE brooms of steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street,
The House was hooked,
The Sun sent out
Faint Deputies of heat—
Where rode the Bird
The Silence tied
His ample, plodding Steed,
The Apple in the cellar snug
Was all the one that played.
LXVIII
THESE are the days that Reindeer love
And pranks the Northern star,
This is the Sun’s objective
And Finland of the year.
LXIX
FOLLOW wise Orion
Till you lose your eye,
Dazzlingly decamping
He is just as high.
LXX
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 fair you are!”
Propitiation‘s
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claw—
“Afraid,” he hissed,
“Of me?”
“No cordiality?”
He fathomed
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me.
Then, to a rhythm slim
Secreted in his form,
As patterns swim,
Projected him.
That time I flew,
Both eyes his way,
Lest he pursue—
Nor ever ceased to run,
Till, in a distant town,
Towns on from mine—
I sat me down;
This was a dream.
LXXI
NOT any sunny tone
From any fervent zone
Finds 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.
LXXII
FOR Death,—or rather
For the things ’t will buy,
These put away
Life’s opportunity.
The things that Death will buy
Are Room,—Escape
From Circumstances,
And a Name.
How gifts of Life
With Death’s gifts will compare,
We know not—
For the rates stop Here.
LXXIII
DROPPED into the
Ether Acre!
Wearing the sod gown-
Bonnet of Everlasting laces—
Brooch frozen on!
Horses of blonde—
And coach of silver,
Baggage a strapped Pearl!
Journey of Down
And whip of Diamond—
Riding to meet the Earl!
LXXIV
THIS quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies,
And Lads and Girls;
Was laughter and ability and sighing,
And frocks and curls.
This passive place a Summer’s nimble mansion,
Where Bloom and Bees
Fulfilled their Oriental Circuit,
Then ceased like these.
LXXV
’T was 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 mere
That these could live,—
And This of ours must die!
LXXVI
Too cold is this
To warm with sun,
Too stiff to bended be,
To joint this agate
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were a feat
Outstaring masonry.
How went the agile kernel out—
Contusion of the husk,
Nor rip, nor wrinkle indicate,—
But just an Asterisk.
LXXVII
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 short years with us,
Each heavier than the last—
A further afternoon to fail,
As Flower at fall of Frost.
LXXVIII
TO-DAY or this noon
She dwelt so close,
I almost touched her;
Tonight she lies
Past neighborhood—
And bough and steeple—
Now past surmise.
LXXIX
I see thee better in the dark,
I do not need a light.
The love of thee a prism be
Excelling violet.
I see thee better for the years
That hunch themselves between,
The miner’s lamp sufficient be
To nullify the mine.
And in the grave I see thee best-
Its little panels be
A-glow, all ruddy with the light
I held so high for thee!
What need of day to those whose dark
Hath so surpassing sun,
It seem it be continually
At the meridian?
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LXXX
Low at my problem bending,
Another problem comes,
Larger than mine, serener,
Involving statelier sums;
I check my busy pencil,
My ciphers
258
slip away,
Wherefore, my baffled fingers,
Time Eternity?
LXXXI
IF pain for peace prepares,
Lo the “Augustan”
259
years
Our feet await!
If Springs from Winter rise,
Can the Anemone’s
Be reckoned up?
If night stands first, then noon,
To gird us for the sun,
What gaze—
When, from a thousand skies,
On our developed eyes
Noons blaze!
LXXXII
I fit for them,
I seek the dark till I am thorough fit.
The labor is a solemn one,
With this sufficient sweet—
That abstinence as mine produce
A purer good for them,
If I succeed,—
If not, I had
The transport of the Aim.
LXXXIII
NOT one by Heaven defrauded stay,
Although He seem to steal,
He restitutes
260
in some sweet way.
Secreted in His will.
LXXXIV
THE feet of people walking home
In gayer sandals go,
The Crocus, till she rises,
The Vassal
261
of the Snow—
The lips at Hallelujah!
Long years of practice bore,
Till bye and bye these Bargemen
Walked singing on the shore.
Pearls are the Diver’s farthings
Extorted from the Sea,
Pinions
262
the Seraph’s wagon,
Pedestrians once, as we—
Night is the morning’s canvas,
Larceny, legacy,
Death but our rapt attention
To immortality.
My figures fail to tell me
How far the village lies,
Whose Peasants are the angels,
Whose Cantons
263
dot the skies,
My Classics veil their faces,
My Faith that dark adores,
Which from its solemn Abbeys
Such resurrection pours!
LXXXV
WE should not mind so small a flower,
Except it quiet bring
Our little garden that we lost
Back to the lawn again.
So spicy her Carnations red,
So drunken reel her Bees,
So silver steal a hundred Flutes
From out a hundred trees,
That whoso sees this little flower,
By faith may clear behold
The Bobolinks around the throne,
And Dandelions gold.
LXXXVI
To the staunch Dust we safe commit thee;
Tongue if it hath, inviolate to thee—
Silence denote and Sanctity enforce thee,
Passenger of Infinity!
LXXXVII
HER “Last Poems”—
Poets ended,
Silver perished with her tongue,
Not on record bubbled other
Flute, or Woman, so divine;
Not unto its Summer morning
Robin uttered half the tune-
Gushed too free for the adoring,
From the Anglo-Florentine.
264
Late the praise—
’T is dull conferring
On a Head too high to crown,
Diadem or Ducal
265
showing,
Be its Grave sufficient sign.
Yet if we, no Poet’s kinsman,
Suffocate with easy woe,
What and if ourself a Bridegroom,
Put Her down, in Italy?
(Written after the death of Mrs. Browning in 1861.)
LXXXVIII
IMMURED
266
in Heaven! What a Cell!
Let every bondage be,
Thou Sweetest of the Universe,
Like that which ravished thee!
LXXXIX
I’M thinking of that other morn,
When Cerements
267
let go,
And Creatures clad in Victory
Go up in two by two!
XC
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.
XCI
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?