Poems: Third Series | Page 5

roams the day,
There
is its noiseless onset,
There is its victory!
Behold the keenest marksman!
The most accomplished shot!
Time's

sublimest target
Is a soul 'forgot'!
XI.
I've got an arrow here;
Loving the hand that sent it,
I the dart
revere.
Fell, they will say, in 'skirmish'!
Vanquished, my soul will know,

By but a simple arrow
Sped by an archer's bow.
XII.
THE MASTER.
He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop
full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,
Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow,
By fainter
hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow
Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool, --

Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.
XIII.
Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the
warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.
When you have done, pray tell me,
That I my thoughts may dim;

Haste! lest while you're lagging,
I may remember him!
XIV.
Father, I bring thee not myself, --
That were the little load;
I bring
thee the imperial heart
I had not strength to hold.
The heart I cherished in my own
Till mine too heavy grew,
Yet

strangest, heavier since it went,
Is it too large for you?
XV.
We outgrow love like other things
And put it in the drawer,
Till it
an antique fashion shows
Like costumes grandsires wore.
XVI.
Not with a club the heart is broken,
Nor with a stone;
A whip, so small you could not see it.
I've known
To lash the magic creature
Till it fell,
Yet that whip's name too noble
Then to tell.
Magnanimous of bird
By boy descried,
To sing unto the stone
Of which it died.
XVII.
WHO?
My friend must be a bird,
Because it flies!
Mortal my friend must be,
Because it dies!
Barbs has it, like a bee.
Ah, curious friend,
Thou puzzlest me!

XVIII.
He touched me, so I live to know
That such a day, permitted so,
I
groped upon his breast.
It was a boundless place to me,
And
silenced, as the awful sea
Puts minor streams to rest.
And now, I'm different from before,
As if I breathed superior air,

Or brushed a royal gown;
My feet, too, that had wandered so,
My
gypsy face transfigured now
To tenderer renown.
XIX.
DREAMS.
Let me not mar that perfect dream
By an auroral stain,
But so adjust
my daily night
That it will come again.
XX.
NUMEN LUMEN.
I live with him, I see his face;
I go no more away
For visitor, or
sundown;
Death's single privacy,
The only one forestalling mine,
And that by right that he
Presents a
claim invisible,
No wedlock granted me.
I live with him, I hear his voice,
I stand alive to-day
To witness to
the certainty
Of immortality
Taught me by Time, -- the lower way,
Conviction every day, --

That life like this is endless,
Be judgment what it may.
XXI.
LONGING.

I envy seas whereon he rides,
I envy spokes of wheels
Of chariots
that him convey,
I envy speechless hills
That gaze upon his journey;
How easy all can see
What is forbidden
utterly
As heaven, unto me!
I envy nests of sparrows
That dot his distant eaves,
The wealthy fly
upon his pane,
The happy, happy leaves
That just abroad his window
Have summer's leave to be,
The
earrings of Pizarro
Could not obtain for me.
I envy light that wakes him,
And bells that boldly ring
To tell him it
is noon abroad, --
Myself his noon could bring,
Yet interdict my blossom
And abrogate my bee,
Lest noon in
everlasting night
Drop Gabriel and me.
XXII.
WEDDED.
A solemn thing it was, I said,
A woman white to be,
And wear, if
God should count me fit,
Her hallowed mystery.
A timid thing to drop a life
Into the purple well,
Too plummetless
that it come back
Eternity until.
III. NATURE.
I.
NATURE'S CHANGES.
The springtime's pallid landscape
Will glow like bright bouquet,

Though drifted deep in parian
The village lies to-day.

The lilacs, bending many a year,
With purple load will hang;
The
bees will not forget the tune
Their old forefathers sang.
The rose will redden in the bog,
The aster on the hill
Her
everlasting fashion set,
And covenant gentians frill,
Till summer folds her miracle
As women do their gown,
Or priests
adjust the symbols
When sacrament is done.
II.
THE TULIP.
She slept beneath a tree
Remembered but by me.
I touched her
cradle mute;
She recognized the foot,
Put on her carmine suit, --

And see!
III.
A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.

When March is scarcely here
A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot
overtake,
But human nature feels.
It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest
slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.
Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula
of sound,
It passes, and we stay:
A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly
encroached
Upon a sacrament.
IV.

THE WAKING YEAR.
A lady red upon the hill
Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white
within the field
In placid lily sleeps!
The tidy breezes with their brooms
Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!

Prithee, my pretty housewives!
Who may expected be?
The neighbors do not yet suspect!
The woods exchange a smile --

Orchard, and buttercup, and bird