Poems: Third Series | Page 2

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,
And every clamor bright
Is
but the gleam concomitant
Of that waylaying light.
The thought is
quiet as a flake, --
A crash without a sound;
How life's
reverberation
Its explanation found!
XXVII.
On the bleakness of my lot
Bloom I strove to raise.
Late, my acre of
a rock
Yielded grape and maize.
Soil of flint if steadfast tilled
Will reward the hand;

Seed of palm
by Lybian sun
Fructified in sand.

XXVIII.
CONTRAST.
A door just opened on a street --
I, lost, was passing by --
An
instant's width of warmth disclosed,
And wealth, and company.
The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by, --
Lost
doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.
XXIX.
FRIENDS.
Are friends delight or pain?
Could bounty but remain
Riches were
good.
But if