As children bid the guest good-night,And then reluctant turn,My flowers raise their pretty lips,Then put their nightgowns on. As children caper when they wake,Merry that it is morn,My flowers from a hundred cribsWill peep, and prance again.

I think the hemlock likes to standUpon a marge of snow;It suits his own austerity,And satisfies an awe That men must slake in wilderness,Or in the desert cloy, —An instinct for the hoar, the bald,Lapland’s necessity. The hemlock’s nature thrives on cold;The gnash of northern windsIs sweetest nutriment to him,His best Norwegian wines. To satin […]

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,A travelling flake of snowAcross a barn or through a rutDebates if it will go. A narrow wind complains all dayHow some one treated him;Nature, like us, is sometimes caughtWithout her diadem.

‘T WAS later when the summer wentThan when the cricket came,And yet we knew that gentle clockMeant nought but going home. ‘T was sooner when the cricket wentThan when the winter came,Yet that pathetic pendulumKeeps esoteric time.

Of all the sounds despatched abroad,There’s not a charge to meLike that old measure in the boughs,That phraseless melody The wind does, working like a handWhose fingers brush the sky,Then quiver down, with tufts of tunePermitted gods and me. When winds go round and round in bands,And thrum upon the door,And birds take places overhead,To […]

Apparently with no surpriseTo any happy flower,The frost beheads it at its playIn accidental power.The blond assassin passes on,The sun proceeds unmovedTo measure off another dayFor an approving God.

My cocoon tightens, colors tease,I’m feeling for the air;A dim capacity for wingsDegrades the dress I wear. A power of butterfly must beThe aptitude to fly,Meadows of majesty concedesAnd easy sweeps of sky. So I must baffle at the hintAnd cipher at the sign,And make much blunder, if at lastI take the clew divine.

Safe in their alabaster chambers,Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,Rafter of satin, and roof of stone. Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, —Ah, what sagacity perished here! Grand go the years in the […]

On this long storm the rainbow rose,On this late morn the sun;The clouds, like listless elephants,Horizons straggled down. The birds rose smiling in their nests,The gales indeed were done;Alas! how heedless were the eyesOn whom the summer shone! The quiet nonchalance of deathNo daybreak can bestir;The slow archangel’s syllablesMust awaken her.

Departed to the judgment,A mighty afternoon;Great clouds like ushers leaning,Creation looking on. The flesh surrendered, cancelled,The bodiless begun;Two worlds, like audiences, disperseAnd leave the soul alone.

One dignity delays for all,One mitred afternoon.None can avoid this purple,None evade this crown. Coach it insures, and footmen,Chamber and state and throng;Bells, also, in the village,As we ride grand along. What dignified attendants,What service when we pause!How loyally at partingTheir hundred hats they raise! How pomp surpassing ermine,When simple you and IPresent our meek […]

Delayed till she had ceased to know,Delayed till in its vest of snowHer loving bosom lay.An hour behind the fleeting breath,Later by just an hour than death, —Oh, lagging yesterday! Could she have guessed that it would be;Could but a crier of the gleeHave climbed the distant hill;Had not the bliss so slow a pace, […]

There’s a certain slant of light,On winter afternoons,That oppresses, like the weightOf cathedral tunes. Heavenly hurt it gives us;We can find no scar,But internal differenceWhere the meanings are. None may teach it anything,‘ T is the seal, despair, —An imperial afflictionSent us of the air. When it comes, the landscape listens,Shadows hold their breath;When it […]

I like a look of agony,Because I know it ‘s true;Men do not sham convulsion,Nor simulate a throe. The eyes glaze once, and that is death.Impossible to feignThe beads upon the foreheadBy homely anguish strung.

That short, potential stirThat each can make but once,That bustle so illustrious‘T is almost consequence, Is the eclat of death.Oh, thou unknown renownThat not a beggar would accept,Had he the power to spurn!

How many times these low feet staggered,Only the soldered mouth can tell;Try! can you stir the awful rivet?Try! can you lift the hasps of steel? Stroke the cool forehead, hot so often,Lift, if you can, the listless hair;Handle the adamantine fingersNever a thimble more shall wear. Buzz the dull flies on the chamber window;Brave shines […]

I died for beauty, but was scarceAdjusted in the tomb,When one who died for truth was lainIn an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed?“For beauty,” I replied.“And I for truth, — the two are one;We brethren are,” he said. And so, as kinsmen met a night,We talked between the rooms,Until the moss had […]

Look back on time with kindly eyes,He doubtless did his best;How softly sinks his trembling sunIn human nature’s west!

A train went through a burial gate,A bird broke forth and sang,And trilled, and quivered, and shook his throatTill all the churchyard rang; And then adjusted his little notes,And bowed and sang again.Doubtless, he thought it meet of himTo say good-by to men.

Exultation is the goingOf an inland soul to sea, —Past the houses, past the headlands,Into deep eternity! Bred as we, among the mountains,Can the sailor understandThe divine intoxicationOf the first league out from land?