And then declines forever
To that abhorred abode
Where hope and he part company, —
For he is grasped of God.
The Maker's cordial visage,
However good to see,
Is shunned, we must admit it,
Like an adversity.
X.
How still the bells in steeples stand,
Till, swollen with the sky,
They leap upon their silver feet
In frantic melody!
XI.
If the foolish call them 'flowers,'
Need the wiser tell?
If the savans 'classify' them,
It is just as well!
Those who read the Revelations
Must not criticise
Those who read the same edition
With beclouded eyes!
Could we stand with that old Moses
Canaan denied, —
Scan, like him, the stately landscape
On the other side, —
Doubtless we should deem superfluous
Many sciences
Not pursued by learnèd angels
In scholastic skies!
Low amid that glad
Belles lettres
Grant that we may stand,
Stars, amid profound Galaxies,
At that grand 'Right hand'!
XII.
A SYLLABLE.
Could mortal lip divine
The undeveloped freight
Of a delivered syllable,
'T would crumble with the weight.
XIII.
PARTING.
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
XIV.
ASPIRATION.
We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.
The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.
XV.
THE INEVITABLE.
While I was fearing it, it came,
But came with less of fear,
Because that fearing it so long
Had almost made it dear.
There is a fitting a dismay,
A fitting a despair.
'Tis harder knowing it is due,
Than knowing it is here.
The trying on the utmost,
The morning it is new,
Is terribler than wearing it
A whole existence through.
XVI.
A BOOK.
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
XVII.
Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God's residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.
XVIII.
A PORTRAIT.
A face devoid of love or grace,
A hateful, hard, successful face,
A face with which a stone
Would feel as thoroughly at ease
As were they old acquaintances, —
First time together thrown.
XIX.
I HAD A GUINEA GOLDEN.
I had a guinea golden;
I lost it in the sand,
And though the sum was simple,
And pounds were in the land,
Still had it such a value
Unto my frugal eye,
That when I could not find it
I sat me down to sigh.
I had a crimson robin
Who sang full many a day,
But when the woods were painted
He, too, did fly away.
Time brought me other robins, —
Their ballads were the same, —
Still for my missing troubadour
I kept the 'house at hame.'
I had a star in heaven;
One Pleiad was its name,
And when I was not heeding
It wandered from the same.
And though the skies are crowded,
And all the night ashine,
I do not care about it,
Since none of them are mine.
My story has a moral:
I have a missing friend, —
Pleiad its name, and robin,
And guinea in the sand, —
And when this mournful ditty,
Accompanied with tear,
Shall meet the eye of traitor
In country far from here,
Grant that repentance solemn
May seize upon his mind,
And he no consolation
Beneath the sun may find.
NOTE. — This poem may have had, like many others, a
personal origin. It is more than probable that it was
sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty
reminder of letter-writing delinquencies.
XX.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
From all the jails the boys and girls
Ecstatically leap, —
Beloved, only afternoon
That prison doesn't keep.
They storm the earth and stun the air,
A mob of solid bliss.
Alas! that frowns could lie in wait
For such a foe as this!
XXI.
Few get enough, — enough is one;
To that ethereal throng
Have not each one of us the right
To stealthily belong?
XXII.
Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
Too sullied for the hell
To which the law entitled him.
As nature's curtain fell
The one who bore him tottered in,
For this was woman's son.
''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped;
Oh, what a livid boon!
XXIII.
THE LOST THOUGHT.
I felt a clearing in my mind
As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
But could not make them fit.
The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon a floor.
XXIV.
RETICENCE.
The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.
If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her,
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?
Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be.
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.
XXV.
WITH FLOWERS.
If recollecting were forgetting,
Then I remember not;
And if forgetting, recollecting,
How near I had forgot!
And if to miss were merry,
And if to mourn were gay,
How very blithe the fingers
That gathered these to-day!
XXVI.
The farthest thunder that I heard
Was nearer than the sky,
And rumbles still, though torrid noons
Have lain their missiles by.
The lightning that preceded it
Struck no one but myself,
But I would not exchange the bolt
For all the rest of life.
Indebtedness to oxygen
The chemist may repay,
But not the obligation
To electricity.
It founds the homes and decks the days,