Poems: Third Series | Page 6

--
In such a little while!
And yet how still the landscape stands,
How nonchalant the wood,

As if the resurrection
Were nothing very odd!
V.
TO MARCH.
Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.

Put down your hat --
You must have walked --
How out of breath
you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave
Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so
much to tell!
I got your letter, and the birds';
The maples never knew
That you
were coming, -- I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March,
forgive me --
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There
was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.
Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!

He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look
so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as
praise
And praise as mere as blame.
VI.

MARCH.
We like March, his shoes are purple,
He is new and high;
Makes he
mud for dog and peddler,
Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder's
tongue his coming,
And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and
mighty
That our minds are hot.
News is he of all the others;
Bold
it were to die
With the blue-birds buccaneering
On his British sky.
VII.
DAWN.
Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door;
Or has it
feathers like a bird,
Or billows like a shore?
VIII.
A murmur in the trees to note,
Not loud enough for wind;
A star not
far enough to seek,
Nor near enough to find;
A long, long yellow on the lawn,
A hubbub as of feet;
Not audible,
as ours to us,
But dapperer, more sweet;
A hurrying home of little men
To houses unperceived, --
All this,
and more, if I should tell,
Would never be believed.
Of robins in the trundle bed
How many I espy
Whose nightgowns
could not hide the wings,
Although I heard them try!
But then I promised ne'er to tell;
How could I break my word?
So
go your way and I'll go mine, --
No fear you'll miss the road.
IX.
Morning is the place for dew,
Corn is made at noon,
After 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