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.
To own a Susan of my own Is of itself a Bliss --
Whatever Realm I forfeit, Lord, Continue me in this!
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 --
My Maker -- let me be Enamored most of thee -- But nearer this
I more should miss --
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.
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.
No Passenger was known to flee -- That lodged a night in memory -- That wily -- subterranean Inn Contrives that none go out again --
1407A 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 --
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 --
1409 Could mortal lip divine
The undeveloped Freight
Of a delivered syllable
'Twould crumble with the weight.
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.
Of Paradise' existence All we know
Is the uncertain certainty -- But its vicinity infer,
By its Bisecting
Messenger --
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.
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 --
Unworthy of her Breast Though by that scathing test What Soul survive?
By her exacting light
How counterfeit the white We chiefly have!
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 --
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.
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?
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 -- 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 Dissolution saw The Poppy in the Cloud
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 spirit With Dirks of Melody
Is part of an inquiry
That will receive reply
When Flesh and Spirit sunder In Death's Immediately --
Such are the inlets of the mind -- His outlets -- would you see Ascend with me the eminence Of immortality --
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 --
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 Floes --
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 part -- 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 is o'er --
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 --
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 --
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 --
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.
We shun because we prize her Face Lest sight's ineffable disgrace Our Adoration stain
1430Who 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 disentrall thy soul --
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
Spurn the temerity -- Rashness of Calvary -- Gay were Gethsemane Knew we of Thee --
1433How 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.
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.
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.
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 praise.
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.
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.
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 --
How ruthless are the gentle -- How cruel are the kind -
God broke his contract to his Lamb To qualify the Wind --
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.
These Fevered Days -- to take them to the Forest Where Waters cool around the mosses crawl -- And shade is all that devastates the stillness Seems it sometimes this would be all --
1442To 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 -
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 --
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 --
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.
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 --
How good his Lava Bed,
To this laborious Boy --
Who must be up to call the World And dress the sleepy Day --
How soft a Caterpillar steps -- I fond 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 --
I thought the Train would never come -- How slow the whistle sang --
I don't believe a peevish 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 --
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 --
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 --
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
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 --
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 -
Opinion is a flitting thing,
But Truth, outlasts the Sun -- If then we cannot own them both -- Possess the oldest one -
So gay a Flower
Bereaves the Mind
As if it were a Woe --
Is Beauty an Affliction -- then? Tradition ought to know --
It stole along so stealthy Suspicion it was done Was dim as to the wealthy Beginning not to own -- 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 --
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 --
His Cheek is his Biographer -- As long as he can blush
Perdition is Opprobrium -- Past that, he sins in peace --
"Heavenly Father" -- take to thee The supreme iniquity
Fashioned by thy candid Hand In a moment contraband --
Though to trust us -- seems to us More respectful -- "We are Dust" -- We apologize to thee
For thine own Duplicity --
We knew not that we were to live -- Nor 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 -
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 --
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 -
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 --
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 entire 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 --
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 --
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
If wrecked upon the Shoal of Thought How is it with the Sea?
The only Vessel that is shunned Is safe -- Simplicity --
1470
The Sweets of Pillage, can be known To no one but the Thief --
Compassion for Integrity
Is his divinest Grief --
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
To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -- True Poems flee --
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 --
Estranged from Beauty -- none can be -- For Beauty is Infinity --
And power to be finite ceased
Before Identity was leased.
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
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 --
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.
Look back on Time, with kindly eyes -- He doubtless did his best --
How softly sinks that trembling sun In Human Nature's West --
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
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 --
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 --
'Tis whiter than an Indian Pipe -- 'Tis dimmer than a Lace --
No stature has it, like a Fog When you approach the place -- Nor any voice imply it here
Or intimate it there
A spirit -- how doth it accost -- What function hat the Air?
This limitless Hyperbole
Each one of us shall be --
'Tis Drama -- if Hypothesis
It be not Tragedy --
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 Consternation
By Ditties to the Enemy
And Sylvan Punctuation --
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.
Love is done when Love's begun, Sages say,
But have Sages known?
Truth adjourn your Boon
Without Day.
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.
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 --
Birthday of but a single pang That there are less to come -- Afflictive is the Adjective But affluent the doom --
1489A Dimple in the Tomb
Makes that ferocious Room A Home --
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 enamor us
Of Detriment divine?
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.
"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 --
Could that sweet Darkness where they dwell Be once disclosed to us
The clamor for their loveliness
Would burst the Loneliness --
The competitions of the sky Corrodeless ply.
1495
The Thrill came slowly like a Boom for Centuries delayed
Its fitness growing like the Flood In sumptuous solitude --
The desolations only missed
While Rapture changed its Dress And stood amazed before the Change In ravished Holiness --
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
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 ignor