“He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,
—In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
All of them touch him like some queer disease.”

“We play at paste,
Till qualified for pearl,
Then drop the paste,
And deem ourself a fool.
The shapes, though, were similar,
And our new hands
Learned gem-tactics
Practising sands.”

-Emily Dickinson.

“His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed.
His eyes come open with a pull of will,
Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head.
A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill . . .
How smooth the floor of the ward is! what a rug!
And who's that talking, somewhere out of sight?
Why are they laughing? What's inside that jug?
"Nurse! Doctor!" "Yes; all right, all right."

But sudden dusk bewilders all the air—
There seems no time to want a drink of water.
Nurse looks so far away. And everywhere
Music and roses burnt through crimson slaughter.
Cold; cold; he's cold; and yet so hot:
And there's no light to see the voices by—
“No time to dream, and ask—he knows not what.”

“Call on Rama! call to Rama!
Oh, my brothers, call on Rama!
For this Dead
Whom we bring,
Call aloud to mighty Rama.
As we bear him, oh, my brothers,
Call together, very loudly,
That the Bhûts
May be scared;
That his spirit pass in comfort.
Turn his feet now, calling "Rama,"
Calling "Rama," who shall take him”
“When the flames
Make an end:
Ram! Ram!—oh, call to Rama.”


-Edwin Arnold.

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,”

“And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I 've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.”

-Emily Dickinson.

“I can wade grief,
Whole pools of it, —
I 'm used to that.
But the least push of joy
Breaks up my feet,”

“And I tip — drunken.
Let no pebble smile,
'T was the new liquor, —
That was all!

Power is only pain,
Stranded, through discipline,
Till weights will hang.
Give balm to giants,
And they 'll wilt, like men.
Give Himmaleh, —
They 'll carry him!”

- Emily Dickinson.

“Let down the bars, O Death!
The tired flocks come in
Whose bleating ceases to repeat,
Whose wandering is done.

Thine is the stillest night,
Thine the securest fold;”
“Too near thou art for seeking thee,
Too tender to be told.”

-Emily Dickinson