Poems: Third Series | Page 6

dinner light for flowers,?Dukes for setting sun!
X.
To my quick ear the leaves conferred;?The bushes they were bells;?I could not find a privacy?From Nature's sentinels.
In cave if I presumed to hide,?The walls began to tell;?Creation seemed a mighty crack?To make me visible.
XI.
A ROSE.
A sepal, petal, and a thorn?Upon a common summer's morn,?A flash of dew, a bee or two,?A breeze?A caper in the trees, --?And I'm a rose!
XII.
High from the earth I heard a bird;?He trod upon the trees?As he esteemed them trifles,?And then he spied a breeze,?And situated softly?Upon a pile of wind?Which in a perturbation?Nature had left behind.?A joyous-going fellow?I gathered from his talk,?Which both of benediction?And badinage partook,?Without apparent burden,?I learned, in leafy wood?He was the faithful father?Of a dependent brood;?And this untoward transport?His remedy for care, --?A contrast to our respites.?How different we are!
XIII.
COBWEBS.
The spider as an artist?Has never been employed?Though his surpassing merit?Is freely certified
By every broom and Bridget?Throughout a Christian land.?Neglected son of genius,?I take thee by the hand.
XIV.
A WELL.
What mystery pervades a well!?The water lives so far,?Like neighbor from another world?Residing in a jar.
The grass does not appear afraid;?I often wonder he?Can stand so close and look so bold?At what is dread to me.
Related somehow they may be, --?The sedge stands next the sea,?Where he is floorless, yet of fear?No evidence gives he.
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.
XV.
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --?One clover, and a bee,?And revery.?The revery alone will do?If bees are few.
XVI.
THE WIND.
It's like the light, --?A fashionless delight?It's like the bee, --?A dateless melody.
It's like the woods,?Private like breeze,?Phraseless, yet it stirs?The proudest trees.
It's like the morning, --?Best when it's done, --?The everlasting clocks?Chime noon.
XVII.
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,?But not again that dew was seen?By physiognomy.
Whether by day abducted,?Or emptied by the sun?Into the sea, in passing,?Eternally unknown.
XVIII.
THE WOODPECKER.
His bill an auger is,?His head, a cap and frill.?He laboreth at every tree, --?A worm his utmost goal.
XIX.
A SNAKE.
Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,?Until we meet a snake;?'T is then we sigh for houses,?And our departure take?At that enthralling gallop?That only childhood knows.?A snake is summer's treason,?And guile is where it goes.
XX.
Could I but ride indefinite,?As doth the meadow-bee,?And visit only where I liked,?And no man visit me,
And flirt all day with buttercups,?And marry whom I may,?And dwell a little everywhere,?Or better, run away
With no police to follow,?Or chase me if I do,?Till I should jump peninsulas?To get away from you, --
I said, but just to be a bee?Upon a raft of air,?And row in nowhere all day long,?And anchor off the bar,--?What liberty! So captives deem?Who tight in dungeons are.
XXI.
THE MOON.
The moon was but a chin of gold?A night or two ago,?And now she turns her perfect face?Upon the world below.
Her forehead is of amplest blond;?Her cheek like beryl stone;?Her eye unto the summer dew?The likest I have known.
Her lips of amber never part;?But what must be the smile?Upon her friend she could bestow?Were such her silver will!
And what a privilege to be?But the remotest star!?For certainly her way might pass?Beside your twinkling door.
Her bonnet is the firmament,?The universe her shoe,?The stars the trinkets at her belt,?Her dimities of blue.
XXII.
THE BAT.
The bat is dun with wrinkled wings?Like fallow article,?And not a song pervades his lips,?Or none perceptible.
His small umbrella, quaintly halved,?Describing in the air?An arc alike inscrutable, --?Elate philosopher!
Deputed from what firmament?Of what astute abode,?Empowered with what malevolence?Auspiciously withheld.
To his adroit Creator?Ascribe no less the praise;?Beneficent, believe me,?His eccentricities.
XXIII.
THE BALLOON.
You've seen balloons set, haven't you??So stately they ascend?It is as swans discarded you?For duties diamond.
Their liquid feet go softly out?Upon a sea of blond;?They spurn the air as 't were too mean?For creatures so renowned.
Their ribbons just beyond the eye,?They struggle some for breath,?And yet the crowd applauds below;?They would not encore death.
The gilded creature strains and spins,?Trips frantic in a tree,?Tears open her imperial veins?And tumbles in the sea.
The crowd retire with an oath?The dust in streets goes down,?And clerks in counting-rooms observe,?''T was only a balloon.'
XXIV.
EVENING.
The cricket sang,?And set the sun,?And workmen finished, one by one,?Their seam the day upon.
The low grass loaded with the dew,?The twilight stood as strangers do?With hat in hand, polite and new,?To stay as if, or go.
A vastness, as a neighbor, came, --?A wisdom without face or name,?A peace, as hemispheres at home, --?And so the night became.
XXV.
COCOON.
Drab habitation of whom??Tabernacle or tomb,?Or dome of worm,?Or porch of gnome,?Or some elf's catacomb?
XXVI.
SUNSET.
A sloop of amber slips away?Upon an ether sea,?And wrecks in