1003

Dying at my music!
Bubble! Bubble!
Hold me till the Octave’s run!
Quick! Burst the Windows!
Ritardando!
Phials left, and the Sun!

158

Dying! Dying in the night!
Won’t somebody bring the light
So I can see which way to go
Into the everlasting snow?

And “Jesus”! Where is Jesus gone?
They said that Jesus—always came—
Perhaps he doesn’t know the House—
This way, Jesus, Let him pass!

Somebody run to the great gate
And see if Dollie’s coming! Wait!
I hear her feet upon the stair!
Death won’t hurt—now Dollie’s here!

831

Dying! To be afraid of thee
One must to thine Artillery
Have left exposed a Friend—
Than thine old Arrow is a Shot
Delivered straighter to the Heart
The leaving Love behind.

Not for itself, the Dust is shy,
But, enemy, Beloved be
Thy Batteries divorce.
Fight sternly in a Dying eye
Two Armies, Love and Certainty
And Love and the Reverse.

680

Each Life Converges to some Centre—
Expressed—or still—
Exists in every Human Nature
A Goal—

Embodied scarcely to itself—it may be—
Too fair
For Credibility’s presumption
To mar—

Adored with caution—as a Brittle Heaven—
To reach
Were hopeless, as the Rainbow’s Raiment
To touch—

Yet persevered toward—sure—for the Distance—
How high—
Unto the Saint’s slow diligence—
The Sky—

Ungained—it may be—by a Life’s low Venture—
But then—
Eternity enable the endeavoring
Again.

877

Each Scar I’ll keep for Him
Instead I’ll say of Gem
In His long Absence worn
A Costlier one

But every Tear I bore
Were He to count them o’er
His own would fall so more
I’ll mis sum them.

879

Each Second is the last
Perhaps, recalls the Man
Just measuring unconsciousness
The Sea and Spar between.

To fail within a Chance—
How terribler a thing
Than perish from the Chance’s list
Before the Perishing!

1605

Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.

1657

Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.

How fair on looking back, the Day
We sauntered from the Door—
Unconscious our returning,
But discover it no more.

1254

Elijah’s Wagon knew no thill
Was innocent of Wheel
Elijah’s horses as unique
As was his vehicle—

Elijah’s journey to portray
Expire with him the skill
Who justified Elijah
In feats inscrutable—

1321

Elizabeth told Essex
That she could not forgive
The clemency of Deity
However—might survive—
That secondary succor
We trust that she partook
When suing—like her Essex
For a reprieving Look—

662

Embarrassment of one another
And God
Is Revelation’s limit,
Aloud
Is nothing that is chief,
But still,
Divinity dwells under a seal.

587

Empty my Heart, of Thee—
Its single Artery—
Begin, and leave Thee out—
Simply Extinction’s Date—

Much Billow hath the Sea—
One Baltic—They—
Subtract Thyself, in play,
And not enough of me
Is left—to put away—
“Myself” meanth Thee—

Erase the Root—no Tree—
Thee—then—no me—
The Heavens stripped—
Eternity’s vast pocket, picked—

1658

Endanger it, and the Demand
Of tickets for a sigh
Amazes the Humility
Of Credibility—

Recover it to Nature
And that dejected Fleet
Find Consternation’s Carnival
Divested of its Meat.

1088

Ended, ere it begun—
The Title was scarcely told
When the Preface perished from Consciousness
The Story, unrevealed—

Had it been mine, to print!
Had it been yours, to read!
That it was not Our privilege
The interdict of God—

521

Endow the Living—with the Tears—
You squander on the Dead,
And They were Men and Women—now,
Around Your Fireside—

Instead of Passive Creatures,
Denied the Cherishing
Till They—the Cherishing deny—
With Death’s Ethereal Scron—

1347

Escape is such a thankful Word
I often in the Night
Consider it unto myself
No spectacle in sight

Escape—it is the Basket
In which the Heart is caught
When down some awful Battlement
The rest of Life is dropt—

’Tis not to sight the savior—
It is to be the saved—
And that is why I lay my Head
Upon this trusty word—

867

Escaping backward to perceive
The Sea upon our place—
Escaping forward, to confront
His glittering Embrace—

Retreating up, a Billow’s height
Retreating blinded down
Our undermining feet to meet
Instructs to the Divine.

675

Essential Oils—are wrung—
The Attar from the Rose
Be not expressed by Suns—alone—
It is the gift of Screws—

The General Rose—decay—
But this—in Lady’s Drawer
Make Summer—When the Lady lie
In Ceaseless Rosemary—

1474

Estranged from Beauty—none can be—
For Beauty is Infinity—
And power to be finite ceased
Before Identity was leased.

472

Except the Heaven had come so near—
So seemed to choose My Door—
The Distance would not haunt me so—
I had not hoped—before—

But just to hear the Grace depart—
I never thought to see—
Afflicts me with a Double loss—
’Tis lost—and lost to me—

1067

Except the smaller size
No lives are round—
These—hurry to a sphere
And show and end—
The larger—slower grow
And later hang—
The Summers of Hesperides
Are long.

154

Except to Heaven, she is nought.
Except for Angels—lone.
Except to some wide-wandering Bee
A flower superfluous blown.

Except for winds—provincial.
Except by Butterflies
Unnoticed as a single dew
That on the Acre lies.

The smallest Housewife in the grass,
Yet take her from the Lawn
And somebody has lost the face
That made Existence—Home!

1118

Exhilaration is the Breeze
That lifts us from the Ground
And leaves us in another place
Whose statement is not found—

Returns us not, but after time
We soberly descend
A little newer for the term
Upon Enchanted Ground—

383

Exhilaration—is within—
There can no Outer Wine
So royally intoxicate
As that diviner Brand

The Soul achieves—Herself—
To drink—or set away
For Visitor—Or Sacrament—
’Tis not of Holiday

To stimulate a Man
Who hath the Ample Rhine
Within his Closet—Best you can
Exhale in offering.

1584

Expanse cannot be lost—
Not Joy, but a Decree
Is Deity—
His Scene, Infinity—
Whose rumor’s Gate was shut so tight
Before my Beam was sown,
Not even a Prognostic’s push
Could make a Dent thereon—

The World that thou hast opened
Shuts for thee,
But not alone,
We all have followed thee—
Escape more slowly
To thy Tracts of Sheen—
The Tent is listening,
But the Troops are gone!

807

Expectation—is Contentment—
Gain—Satiety—
But Satiety—Conviction
Of Necessity

Of an Austere trait in Pleasure—
Good, without alarm
Is a too established Fortune—
Danger—deepens Sum—

910

Experience is the Angled Road
Preferred against the Mind
By—Paradox—the Mind itself—
Presuming it to lead

Quite Opposite—How Complicate
The Discipline of Man—
Compelling Him to Choose Himself
His Preappointed Pain—

1770

Experiment escorts us last—
His pungent company
Will not allow an Axiom
An Opportunity

1073

Experiment to me
Is every one I meet
If it contain a Kernel?
The Figure of a Nut

Presents upon a Tree
Equally plausibly,
But Meat within, is requisite
To Squirrels, and to Me.

1644

Some one prepared this mighty show
To which without a Ticket go
The nations and the Days—

Displayed before the simplest Door
That all may witness it and more,
The pomp of summer Days.

76

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?

1497

Facts by our side are never sudden
Until they look around
And then they scare us like a spectre
Protruding from the Ground—

The height of our portentous Neighbor
We never know—
Till summoned to his recognition
By an Adieu—

Adieu for whence
The sage cannot conjecture
The bravest die
As ignorant of their resumption
As you or I—

938

Fairer through Fading—as the Day
Into the Darkness dips away—
Half Her Complexion of the Sun—
Hindering—Haunting—Perishing—

Rallies Her Glow, like a dying Friend—
Teasing with glittering Amend—
Only to aggravate the Dark
Through an expiring—perfect—look—

1357

“Faithful to the end” Amended
From the Heavenly Clause—
Constancy with a Proviso
Constancy abhors—

“Crowns of Life” are servile Prizes
To the stately Heart,
Given for the Giving, solely,
No Emolument.
—
“Faithful to the end” Amended
From the Heavenly clause—
Lucrative indeed the offer
But the Heart withdraws—

“I will give” the base Proviso—
Spare Your “Crown of Life”—
Those it fits, too fair to wear it—
Try it on Yourself—

185

“Faith” is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see—
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.

915

Faith—is the Pierless Bridge
Supporting what We see
Unto the Scene that We do not—
Too slender for the eye

It bears the Soul as bold
As it were rocked in Steel
With Arms of Steel at either side—
It joins—behind the Veil

To what, could We presume
The Bridge would cease to be
To Our far, vacillating Feet
A first Necessity.

1007

Falsehood of Thee could I suppose
’Twould undermine the Sill
To which my Faith pinned Block by Block
Her Cedar Citadel.

1763

Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.

1659

Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the
Farmer’s Corn—
Men eat of it and die.

1475

Fame is the one that does not stay—
Its occupant must die
Or out of sight of estimate
Ascend incessantly—
Or be that most insolvent thing
A Lightning in the Germ—
Electrical the embryo
But we demand the Flame

866

Fame is the tine that Scholars leave
Upon their Setting Names—
The Iris not of Occident
That disappears as comes—

713

Fame of Myself, to justify,
All other Plaudit be
Superfluous—An Incense
Beyond Necessity—

Fame of Myself to lack—Although
My Name be else Supreme—
This were an Honor honorless—
A futile Diadem—

1066

Fame’s Boys and Girls, who never die
And are too seldom born—

1021

Far from Love the Heavenly Father
Leads the Chosen Child,
Oftener through Realm of Briar
Than the Meadow mild.

Oftener by the Claw of Dragon
Than the Hand of Friend
Guides the Little One predestined
To the Native Land.

1031

Fate slew Him, but He did not drop—
She felled—He did not fall—
Impaled Him on Her fiercest stakes—
He neutralized them all—

She stung Him—sapped His firm Advance—
But when Her Worst was done
And He—unmoved regarded Her—
Acknowledged Him a Man.

1596

Few, yet enough,
Enough is One—
To that ethereal throng
Have not each one of us the right
To stealthily belong?

870

Finding is the first Act
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The “Golden Fleece”

Fourth, no Discovery—
Fifth, no Crew—
Finally, no Golden Fleece—
Jason—sham—too.

847

Finite—to fail, but infinite to Venture—
For the one ship that struts the shore
Many’s the gallant—overwhelmed Creature
Nodding in Navies nevermore—

968

Fitter to see Him, I may be
For the long Hindrance—Grace—to Me—
With Summers, and with Winters, grow,
Some passing Year—A trait bestow

To make Me fairest of the Earth—
The Waiting—then—will seem so worth
I shall impute with half a pain
The blame that I was chosen—then—

Time to anticipate His Gaze—
It’s first—Delight—and then—Surprise—
The turning o’er and o’er my face
For Evidence it be the Grace—

He left behind One Day—So less
He seek Conviction, That—be This—

I only must not grow so new
That He’ll mistake—and ask for me
Of me—when first unto the Door
I go—to Elsewhere go no more—

I only must not change so fair
He’ll sigh—”The Other—She—is Where?”
The Love, tho’, will array me right
I shall be perfect—in His sight—

If He perceive the other Truth—
Upon an Excellenter Youth—

How sweet I shall not lack in Vain—
But gain—thro’ loss—Through Grief—obtain—
The Beauty that reward Him best—
The Beauty of Demand—at Rest—

1322

Floss won’t save you from an Abyss
But a Rope will—
Notwithstanding a Rope for a Souvenir
Is not beautiful—

But I tell you every step is a Trough—
And every stop a Well—
Now will you have the Rope or the Floss?
Prices reasonable—