Poems: Third Series | Page 7

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
peace a purple tar,
The son of ecstasy.
XXVII.
AURORA.
Of bronze and blaze
The north, to-night!
So adequate its forms,

So preconcerted with itself,
So distant to alarms, --
An unconcern
so sovereign
To universe, or me,
It paints my simple spirit
With
tints of majesty,
Till I take vaster attitudes,
And strut upon my stem,

Disdaining men and oxygen,
For arrogance of them.
My splendors are menagerie;
But their competeless show
Will
entertain the centuries
When I am, long ago,
An island in
dishonored grass,
Whom none but daisies know.
XXVIII.
THE COMING OF NIGHT.
How the old mountains drip with sunset,
And the brake of dun!

How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
By the wizard sun!
How the old steeples hand the scarlet,
Till the ball is full, --
Have I
the lip of the flamingo
That I dare to tell?
Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,
Touching all the grass
With a

departing, sapphire feature,
As if a duchess pass!
How a small dusk crawls on the village
Till the houses blot;
And
the odd flambeaux no men carry
Glimmer on the spot!
Now it is night in nest and kennel,
And where was the wood,
Just a
dome of abyss is nodding
Into solitude! --
These are the visions baffled Guido;
Titian never told;

Domenichino dropped the pencil,
Powerless to unfold.
XXIX.
AFTERMATH.
The murmuring of bees has ceased;
But murmuring of some

Posterior, prophetic,
Has simultaneous come, --
The lower metres of the year,
When nature's laugh is done, --
The
Revelations of the book
Whose Genesis is June.
IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.
I.
This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as
music,
But positive, as sound.
It beckons and it baffles;

Philosophies don't know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
Sagacity
must go.
To guess it puzzles scholars;
To gain it, men have shown

Contempt of generations,
And crucifixion known.
II.
We learn in the retreating
How vast an one
Was recently among us.

A perished sun

Endears in the departure
How doubly more
Than all the golden
presence
It was before!
III.
They say that 'time assuages,' --
Time never did assuage;
An actual
suffering strengthens,
As sinews do, with age.
Time is a test of trouble,
But not a remedy.
If such it prove, it prove
too
There was no malady.
IV.
We cover thee, sweet face.
Not that we tire of thee,
But that thyself
fatigue of us;
Remember, as thou flee,
We follow thee until
Thou
notice us no more,
And then, reluctant, turn away
To con thee o'er
and o'er,
And blame the scanty love
We were content to show,

Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold
If thou would'st take it now.
V.
ENDING.
That is solemn we have ended, --
Be it but