“Heart! We will forget him!”
“The Soul selects her own Society”
Heart! We will forget him!
You and I—tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave—
I will forget the light!
THE SOUL selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.
When you have done, pray tell me
That I may straight begin!
Haste! lest while you're lagging
I remember him!
Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.
“If you were coming in the Fall”
I ’ve known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
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Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.
IF you were coming in the fall,
I ’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.
“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church”
If I could see you in a year,
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I ’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
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SOME keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.
Until their time befalls.
If only centuries delayed,
I ’d count them on my hand,
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Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen’s land.
If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I ’d toss it yonder like a rind,
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And taste eternity.
But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.
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Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
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I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.
God preaches,—a noted clergyman,—
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I ’m going all along!
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“I taste a liquor never brewed”
“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant”
I TASTE a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
Inebriate of air am I,
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And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove’s door,
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When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!
“Success is counted sweetest”
SUCCESS is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
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Leaning against the sun!
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
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“Much madness is divinest Sense”
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
MUCH madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
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Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
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“I died for Beauty – but was scarce”
“Apparently with no surprise”
I DIED for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
APPARENTLY with no surprise
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play
In accidental power.
He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.
The blond assassin passes on,
The sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another day
For an approving God.
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And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
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“Because I could not stop for Death”
BECAUSE I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
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We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
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We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
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Since then ’t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.
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“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died”
I HEARD a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
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I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
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Could make assignable,—and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
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