Šrift:Väiksem АаSuurem Aa
XL
When I hoped I feared,
Since I hoped I dared;
Everywhere alone
As a church remain;
Spectre cannot harm,
Serpent cannot charm;
He deposes doom,
Who hath suffered him.
XLI.
DEED
A deed knocks first at thought,
And then it knocks at will.
That is the manufacturing spot,
And will at home and well.
It then goes out an act,
Or is entombed so still
That only to the ear of God
Its doom is audible.
XLII.
TIME'S LESSON
Mine enemy is growing old, —
I have at last revenge.
The palate of the hate departs;
If any would avenge, —
Let him be quick, the viand flits,
It is a faded meat.
Anger as soon as fed is dead;
'T is starving makes it fat.
XLIII.
REMORSE
Remorse is memory awake,
Her companies astir, —
A presence of departed acts
At window and at door.
It's past set down before the soul,
And lighted with a match,
Perusal to facilitate
Of its condensed despatch.
Remorse is cureless, – the disease
Not even God can heal;
For 't is his institution, —
The complement of hell.
XLIV.
THE SHELTER
The body grows outside, —
The more convenient way, —
That if the spirit like to hide,
Its temple stands alway
Ajar, secure, inviting;
It never did betray
The soul that asked its shelter
In timid honesty.
XLV
Undue significance a starving man attaches
To food
Far off; he sighs, and therefore hopeless,
And therefore good.
Partaken, it relieves indeed, but proves us
That spices fly
In the receipt. It was the distance
Was savory.
XLVI
Heart not so heavy as mine,
Wending late home,
As it passed my window
Whistled itself a tune, —
A careless snatch, a ballad,
A ditty of the street;
Yet to my irritated ear
An anodyne so sweet,
It was as if a bobolink,
Sauntering this way,
Carolled and mused and carolled,
Then bubbled slow away.
It was as if a chirping brook
Upon a toilsome way
Set bleeding feet to minuets
Without the knowing why.
To-morrow, night will come again,
Weary, perhaps, and sore.
Ah, bugle, by my window,
I pray you stroll once more!
XLVII
I many times thought peace had come,
When peace was far away;
As wrecked men deem they sight the land
At centre of the sea,
And struggle slacker, but to prove,
As hopelessly as I,
How many the fictitious shores
Before the harbor lie.
XLVIII
Unto my books so good to turn
Far ends of tired days;
It half endears the abstinence,
And pain is missed in praise.
As flavors cheer retarded guests
With banquetings to be,
So spices stimulate the time
Till my small library.
It may be wilderness without,
Far feet of failing men,
But holiday excludes the night,
And it is bells within.
I thank these kinsmen of the shelf;
Their countenances bland
Enamour in prospective,
And satisfy, obtained.
XLIX
This merit hath the worst, —
It cannot be again.
When Fate hath taunted last
And thrown her furthest stone,
The maimed may pause and breathe,
And glance securely round.
The deer invites no longer
Than it eludes the hound.
L.
HUNGER
I had been hungry all the years;
My noon had come, to dine;
I, trembling, drew the table near,
And touched the curious wine.
'T was this on tables I had seen,
When turning, hungry, lone,
I looked in windows, for the wealth
I could not hope to own.
I did not know the ample bread,
'T was so unlike the crumb
The birds and I had often shared
In Nature's dining-room.
The plenty hurt me, 't was so new, —
Myself felt ill and odd,
As berry of a mountain bush
Transplanted to the road.
Nor was I hungry; so I found
That hunger was a way
Of persons outside windows,
The entering takes away.
LI
I gained it so,
By climbing slow,
By catching at the twigs that grow
Between the bliss and me.
It hung so high,
As well the sky
Attempt by strategy.
I said I gained it, —
This was all.
Look, how I clutch it,
Lest it fall,
And I a pauper go;
Unfitted by an instant's grace
For the contented beggar's face
I wore an hour ago.
LII
To learn the transport by the pain,
As blind men learn the sun;
To die of thirst, suspecting
That brooks in meadows run;
To stay the homesick, homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore
Haunted by native lands, the while,
And blue, beloved air —
This is the sovereign anguish,
This, the signal woe!
These are the patient laureates
Whose voices, trained below,
Ascend in ceaseless carol,
Inaudible, indeed,
To us, the duller scholars
Of the mysterious bard!
LIII.
RETURNING
I years had been from home,
And now, before the door,
I dared not open, lest a face
I never saw before
Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business, – just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?
I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near;
The silence like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear.
I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and the dead had faced,
But never quaked before.
I fitted to the latch
My hand, with trembling care,
Lest back the awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there.
I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears, and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house.
LIV.
PRAYER
Prayer is the little implement
Through which men reach
Where presence is denied them.
They fling their speech
By means of it in God's ear;
If then He hear,
This sums the apparatus
Comprised in prayer.
LV
I know that he exists
Somewhere, in silence.
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.
'T is an instant's play,
'T is a fond ambush,
Just to make bliss
Earn her own surprise!
But should the play
Prove piercing earnest,
Should the glee glaze
In death's stiff stare,
Would not the fun
Look too expensive?
Would not the jest
Have crawled too far?
LVI.
MELODIES UNHEARD
Musicians wrestle everywhere:
All day, among the crowded air,
I hear the silver strife;
And – waking long before the dawn —
Such transport breaks upon the town
I think it that "new life!"
It is not bird, it has no nest;
Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed,
Nor tambourine, nor man;
It is not hymn from pulpit read, —
The morning stars the treble led
On time's first afternoon!
Some say it is the spheres at play!
Some say that bright majority
Of vanished dames and men!
Some think it service in the place
Where we, with late, celestial face,
Please God, shall ascertain!
LVII.
CALLED BACK
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!
Therefore, as one returned, I feel,
Odd secrets of the line to tell!
Some sailor, skirting foreign shores,
Some pale reporter from the awful doors
Before the seal!
Next time, to stay!
Next time, the things to see
By ear unheard,
Unscrutinized by eye.
Next time, to tarry,
While the ages steal, —
Slow tramp the centuries,
And the cycles wheel.
II.
LOVE
I.
CHOICE
Of all the souls that stand create
I have elected one.
When sense from spirit files away,
And subterfuge is done;
When that which is and that which was
Apart, intrinsic, stand,
And this brief tragedy of flesh
Is shifted like a sand;
When figures show their royal front
And mists are carved away, —
Behold the atom I preferred
To all the lists of clay!
II
I have no life but this,
To lead it here;
Nor any death, but lest
Dispelled from there;
Nor tie to earths to come,
Nor action new,
Except through this extent,
The realm of you.
III
Your riches taught me poverty.
Myself a millionnaire
In little wealths, – as girls could boast, —
Till broad as Buenos Ayre,
You drifted your dominions
A different Peru;
And I esteemed all poverty,
For life's estate with you.
Of mines I little know, myself,
But just the names of gems, —
The colors of the commonest;
And scarce of diadems
So much that, did I meet the queen,
Her glory I should know:
But this must be a different wealth,
To miss it beggars so.
I 'm sure 't is India all day
To those who look on you
Without a stint, without a blame, —
Might I but be the Jew!
I 'm sure it is Golconda,
Beyond my power to deem, —
To have a smile for mine each day,
How better than a gem!
At least, it solaces to know
That there exists a gold,
Although I prove it just in time
Its distance to behold!
It 's far, far treasure to surmise,
And estimate the pearl
That slipped my simple fingers through
While just a girl at school!
IV.
THE CONTRACT
I gave myself to him,
And took himself for pay.
The solemn contract of a life
Was ratified this way.
The wealth might disappoint,
Myself a poorer prove
Than this great purchaser suspect,
The daily own of Love
Depreciate the vision;
But, till the merchant buy,
Still fable, in the isles of spice,
The subtle cargoes lie.
At least, 't is mutual risk, —
Some found it mutual gain;
Sweet debt of Life, – each night to owe,
Insolvent, every noon.
V.
THE LETTER
"GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him —
Tell him the page I did n't write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried,
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.
"Tell him it was n't a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him – No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it,
And then you and I were silenter.
"Tell him night finished before we finished,
And the old clock kept neighing 'day!'
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended —
What could it hinder so, to say?
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
But if he ask where you are hid
Until to-morrow, – happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!"
VI
The way I read a letter 's this:
'T is first I lock the door,
And push it with my fingers next,
For transport it be sure.
And then I go the furthest off
To counteract a knock;
Then draw my little letter forth
And softly pick its lock.
Then, glancing narrow at the wall,
And narrow at the floor,
For firm conviction of a mouse
Not exorcised before,
Peruse how infinite I am
To – no one that you know!
And sigh for lack of heaven, – but not
The heaven the creeds bestow.