Works

The night was wide, and furnished scant
With but a single star,
That often as a cloud it met
Blew out itself for fear.

The wind pursued the little bush,
And drove away the leaves...

A thought went up my mind to-day
That I have had before,
But did not finish, -- some way back,
I could not fix the year,

Nor where it went, nor why it came
The second time to me,...

A throe upon the features
A hurry in the breath,
An ecstasy of parting
Denominated "Death," --

An anguish at the mention,
Which, when to patience grown,
I 've known permission given...

The wind begun to rock the grass
With threatening tunes and low, --
He flung a menace at the earth,
A menace at the sky.

The leaves unhooked themselves from trees
And started all abroad;...

At least to pray is left, is left.
O Jesus! in the air
I know not which thy chamber is, --
I 'm knocking everywhere.

Thou stirrest earthquake in the South,
And maelstrom in the sea;...

Her final summer was it,
And yet we guessed it not;
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded her, we thought

A further force of life
Developed from within, --
When Death lit all the shortness up,...

A toad can die of light!
Death is the common right
Of toads and men, --
Of earl and midge
The privilege.
Why swagger then?
The gnat's supremacy
Is large as thine.

A train went through a burial gate,
A bird broke forth and sang,
And trilled, and quivered, and shook his throat
Till all the churchyard rang;

And then adjusted his little notes,...

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...

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....

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...

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

A wounded deer leaps highest,
I've heard the hunter tell;
'T is but the ecstasy of death,
And then the brake is still.

The smitten rock that gushes,
The trampled steel that springs;...

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;...

Before the ice is in the pools,
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow,

Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder...

Belshazzar had a letter, --
He never had but one;
Belshazzar's correspondent
Concluded and begun
In that immortal copy
The conscience of us all
Can read without its glasses
On revelation's wall.

You left me, sweet, two legacies, --
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;

You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,...

Bless God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast;
Grant, God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest.

Please God, might I behold him
In epauletted white,...

I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me,

And frigates in the upper floor
Extended hempen hands,
Presuming me to be a mouse...

Just lost when I was saved!
Just felt the world go by!
Just girt me for the onset with eternity,
When breath blew back,
And on the other side
I heard recede the disappointed tide!
...