Poems of Emily Dickinson, series 1 | Page 9

round and round in bands,?And thrum upon the door,?And birds take places overhead,?To bear them orchestra,
I crave him grace, of summer boughs,?If such an outcast be,?He never heard that fleshless chant?Rise solemn in the tree,
As if some caravan of sound?On deserts, in the sky,?Had broken rank,?Then knit, and passed?In seamless company.
XXV.
DEATH AND LIFE.
Apparently with no surprise?To any happy flower,?The frost beheads it at its play?In accidental power.?The blond assassin passes on,?The sun proceeds unmoved?To measure off another day?For an approving God.
XXVI.
'T WAS later when the summer went?Than when the cricket came,?And yet we knew that gentle clock?Meant nought but going home.
'T was sooner when the cricket went?Than when the winter came,?Yet that pathetic pendulum?Keeps esoteric time.
XXVII.
INDIAN SUMMER.
These are the days when birds come back,?A very few, a bird or two,?To take a backward look.
These are the days when skies put on?The old, old sophistries of June, --?A blue and gold mistake.
Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,?Almost thy plausibility?Induces my belief,
Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,?And softly through the altered air?Hurries a timid leaf!
Oh, sacrament of summer days,?Oh, last communion in the haze,?Permit a child to join,
Thy sacred emblems to partake,?Thy consecrated bread to break,?Taste thine immortal wine!
XXVIII.
AUTUMN.
The morns are meeker than they were,?The nuts are getting brown;?The berry's cheek is plumper,?The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,?The field a scarlet gown.?Lest I should be old-fashioned,?I'll put a trinket on.
XXIX.
BECLOUDED.
The sky is low, the clouds are mean,?A travelling flake of snow?Across a barn or through a rut?Debates if it will go.
A narrow wind complains all day?How some one treated him;?Nature, like us, is sometimes caught?Without her diadem.
XXX.
THE HEMLOCK.
I think the hemlock likes to stand?Upon a marge of snow;?It suits his own austerity,?And satisfies an awe
That men must slake in wilderness,?Or in the desert cloy, --?An instinct for the hoar, the bald,?Lapland's necessity.
The hemlock's nature thrives on cold;?The gnash of northern winds?Is sweetest nutriment to him,?His best Norwegian wines.
To satin races he is nought;?But children on the Don?Beneath his tabernacles play,?And Dnieper wrestlers run.
XXXI.
There's a certain slant of light,?On winter afternoons,?That oppresses, like the weight?Of cathedral tunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;?We can find no scar,?But internal difference?Where the meanings are.
None may teach it anything,?' T is the seal, despair, --?An imperial affliction?Sent us of the air.
When it comes, the landscape listens,?Shadows hold their breath;?When it goes, 't is like the distance?On the look of death.
IV.
TIME AND ETERNITY.
I.
One dignity delays for all,?One mitred afternoon.?None can avoid this purple,?None evade this crown.
Coach it insures, and footmen,?Chamber and state and throng;?Bells, also, in the village,?As we ride grand along.
What dignified attendants,?What service when we pause!?How loyally at parting?Their hundred hats they raise!
How pomp surpassing ermine,?When simple you and I?Present our meek escutcheon,?And claim the rank to die!
II.
TOO LATE.
Delayed till she had ceased to know,?Delayed till in its vest of snow
Her loving bosom lay.?An hour behind the fleeting breath,?Later by just an hour than death, --
Oh, lagging yesterday!
Could she have guessed that it would be;?Could but a crier of the glee
Have climbed the distant hill;?Had not the bliss so slow a pace, --?Who knows but this surrendered face
Were undefeated still?
Oh, if there may departing be?Any forgot by victory
In her imperial round,?Show them this meek apparelled thing,?That could not stop to be a king,
Doubtful if it be crowned!
III.
ASTRA CASTRA.
Departed to the judgment,?A mighty afternoon;?Great clouds like ushers leaning,?Creation looking on.
The flesh surrendered, cancelled,?The bodiless begun;?Two worlds, like audiences, disperse?And leave the soul alone.
IV.
Safe in their alabaster chambers,?Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,?Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,?Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.
Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;?Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;?Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, --?Ah, what sagacity perished here!
Grand go the years in the crescent above them;?Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,?Diadems drop and Doges surrender,?Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.
V.
On this long storm the rainbow rose,?On this late morn the sun;?The clouds, like listless elephants,?Horizons straggled down.
The birds rose smiling in their nests,?The gales indeed were done;?Alas! how heedless were the eyes?On whom the summer shone!
The quiet nonchalance of death?No daybreak can bestir;?The slow archangel's syllables?Must awaken her.
VI.
FROM THE CHRYSALIS.
My cocoon tightens, colors tease,?I'm feeling for the air;?A dim capacity for wings?Degrades the dress I wear.
A power of butterfly must be?The aptitude to fly,?Meadows of majesty concedes?And easy sweeps of sky.
So I must baffle at the hint?And cipher at the sign,?And make much blunder, if at last?I take the clew divine.
VII.
SETTING SAIL.
Exultation is the going?Of an inland soul to sea, --?Past the houses, past the headlands,?Into deep eternity!
Bred as we, among the mountains,?Can the sailor understand?The divine intoxication?Of the first league out from land?
VIII.
Look back on time with kindly eyes,?He doubtless did his best;?How softly sinks his trembling sun?In human nature's west!
IX.
A train went through a