Poems: Third Series | Page 3

they only stay
Bolder to fly away,
Riches are sad.
XXX.
FIRE.
Ashes denote that fire was;
Respect the grayest pile
For the
departed creature's sake
That hovered there awhile.
Fire exists the first in light,
And then consolidates, --
Only the
chemist can disclose
Into what carbonates.
XXXI.
A MAN.
Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
She felled -- he did not fall --

Impaled him on her fiercest stakes --
He neutralized them all.
She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
But, when her worst was

done,
And he, unmoved, regarded her,
Acknowledged him a man.
XXXII.
VENTURES.
Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
For the one ship that struts the
shore
Many's the gallant, overwhelmed creature
Nodding in navies
nevermore.
XXXIII.
GRIEFS.
I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it
weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell
the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether,
could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
I wonder if when years have piled --
Some thousands -- on the cause

Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;
Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,

Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.
The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies, --
Death is
but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.
There's grief of want, and grief of cold, --
A sort they call 'despair;'

There's banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.
And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me
A

piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,
To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those that stand alone,
Still
fascinated to presume
That some are like my own.
XXXIV.
I have a king who does not speak;
So, wondering, thro' the hours
meek
I trudge the day away,--
Half glad when it is night and sleep,

If, haply, thro' a dream to peep
In parlors shut by day.
And if I do, when morning comes,
It is as if a hundred drums
Did
round my pillow roll,
And shouts fill all my childish sky,
And bells
keep saying 'victory'
From steeples in my soul!
And if I don't, the little Bird
Within the Orchard is not heard,
And I
omit to pray,
'Father, thy will be done' to-day,
For my will goes the
other way,
And it were perjury!
XXXV.
DISENCHANTMENT.
It dropped so low in my regard
I heard it hit the ground,
And go to
pieces on the stones
At bottom of my mind;
Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less
Than I reviled myself
For
entertaining plated wares
Upon my silver shelf.
XXXVI.
LOST FAITH.
To lose one's faith surpasses
The loss of an estate,
Because estates
can be
Replenished, -- faith cannot.

Inherited with life,
Belief but once can be;
Annihilate a single
clause,
And Being's beggary.
XXXVII.
LOST JOY.
I had a daily bliss
I half indifferent viewed,
Till sudden I perceived
it stir, --
It grew as I pursued,
Till when, around a crag,
It wasted from my sight,
Enlarged beyond
my utmost scope,
I learned its sweetness right.
XXXVIII.
I worked for chaff, and earning wheat
Was haughty and betrayed.

What right had fields to arbitrate
In matters ratified?
I tasted wheat, -- and hated chaff,
And thanked the ample friend;

Wisdom is more becoming viewed
At distance than at hand.
XXXIX.
Life, and Death, and Giants
Such as these, are still.
Minor apparatus,
hopper of the mill,
Beetle at the candle,
Or a fife's small fame,

Maintain by accident
That they proclaim.
XL.
ALPINE GLOW.
Our lives are Swiss, --
So still, so cool,
Till, some odd afternoon,

The Alps neglect their curtains,
And we look farther on.
Italy stands the other side,
While, like a guard between,
The solemn
Alps,
The siren Alps,
Forever intervene!

XLI.
REMEMBRANCE.
Remembrance has a rear and front, --
'T is something like a house;

It has a garret also
For refuse and the mouse,
Besides, the deepest cellar
That ever mason hewed;
Look to it, by
its fathoms
Ourselves be not pursued.
XLII.
To hang our head ostensibly,
And subsequent to find
That such was
not the posture
Of our immortal mind,
Affords the sly presumption
That, in so dense a fuzz,
You, too, take
cobweb attitudes
Upon a plane of gauze!
XLIII.
THE BRAIN.
The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one
the other will include
With ease, and you beside.
The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The
one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.
The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,

And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.
XLIV.
The bone that has no marrow;
What ultimate for that?
It is not fit
for table,
For beggar, or for cat.
A bone has obligations,
A being has the same;
A marrowless

assembly
Is culpabler than shame.
But how shall finished creatures
A function fresh obtain? --
Old
Nicodemus' phantom
Confronting us again!
XLV.
THE PAST.
The past is such a curious creature,
To look her in the face
A
transport may reward us,
Or a disgrace.
Unarmed if any meet her,
I charge him,