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XVII.
WHO?

 
My friend must be a bird,
    Because it flies!
Mortal my friend must be,
    Because it dies!
Barbs has it, like a bee.
Ah, curious friend,
    Thou puzzlest me!
 

XVIII

 
He touched me, so I live to know
That such a day, permitted so,
  I groped upon his breast.
It was a boundless place to me,
And silenced, as the awful sea
  Puts minor streams to rest.
 
 
And now, I'm different from before,
As if I breathed superior air,
  Or brushed a royal gown;
My feet, too, that had wandered so,
My gypsy face transfigured now
  To tenderer renown.
 

XIX.
DREAMS

 
Let me not mar that perfect dream
  By an auroral stain,
But so adjust my daily night
  That it will come again.
 

XX.
NUMEN LUMEN

 
I live with him, I see his face;
  I go no more away
For visitor, or sundown;
  Death's single privacy,
 
 
The only one forestalling mine,
  And that by right that he
Presents a claim invisible,
  No wedlock granted me.
 
 
I live with him, I hear his voice,
  I stand alive to-day
To witness to the certainty
  Of immortality
 
 
Taught me by Time, – the lower way,
  Conviction every day, —
That life like this is endless,
  Be judgment what it may.
 

XXI.
LONGING

 
I envy seas whereon he rides,
  I envy spokes of wheels
Of chariots that him convey,
  I envy speechless hills
 
 
That gaze upon his journey;
  How easy all can see
What is forbidden utterly
  As heaven, unto me!
 
 
I envy nests of sparrows
  That dot his distant eaves,
The wealthy fly upon his pane,
  The happy, happy leaves
 
 
That just abroad his window
  Have summer's leave to be,
The earrings of Pizarro
  Could not obtain for me.
 
 
I envy light that wakes him,
  And bells that boldly ring
To tell him it is noon abroad, —
  Myself his noon could bring,
 
 
Yet interdict my blossom
  And abrogate my bee,
Lest noon in everlasting night
  Drop Gabriel and me.
 

XXII.
WEDDED

 
A solemn thing it was, I said,
  A woman white to be,
And wear, if God should count me fit,
  Her hallowed mystery.
 
 
A timid thing to drop a life
  Into the purple well,
Too plummetless that it come back
  Eternity until.
 

III. NATURE

I.
NATURE'S CHANGES

 
The springtime's pallid landscape
  Will glow like bright bouquet,
Though drifted deep in parian
  The village lies to-day.
 
 
The lilacs, bending many a year,
  With purple load will hang;
The bees will not forget the tune
  Their old forefathers sang.
 
 
The rose will redden in the bog,
  The aster on the hill
Her everlasting fashion set,
  And covenant gentians frill,
 
 
Till summer folds her miracle
  As women do their gown,
Or priests adjust the symbols
  When sacrament is done.
 

II.
THE TULIP

 
She slept beneath a tree
  Remembered but by me.
I touched her cradle mute;
She recognized the foot,
Put on her carmine suit, —
  And see!
 

III

 
A light exists in spring
  Not present on the year
At any other period.
  When March is scarcely here
 
 
A color stands abroad
  On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
  But human nature feels.
 
 
It waits upon the lawn;
  It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
  It almost speaks to me.
 
 
Then, as horizons step,
  Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
  It passes, and we stay:
 
 
A quality of loss
  Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
  Upon a sacrament.
 

IV.
THE WAKING YEAR

 
A lady red upon the hill
  Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white within the field
  In placid lily sleeps!
 
 
The tidy breezes with their brooms
  Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!
Prithee, my pretty housewives!
  Who may expected be?
 
 
The neighbors do not yet suspect!
  The woods exchange a smile —
Orchard, and buttercup, and bird —
  In such a little while!
 
 
And yet how still the landscape stands,
  How nonchalant the wood,
As if the resurrection
  Were nothing very odd!
 

V.
TO MARCH

 
Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat —
You must have walked —
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!
 
 
I got your letter, and the birds';
The maples never knew
That you were coming, – I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me —
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.
 
 
Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.
 

VI.
MARCH

 
We like March, his shoes are purple,
  He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
  Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
  And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and mighty
  That our minds are hot.
News is he of all the others;
  Bold it were to die
With the blue-birds buccaneering
  On his British sky.
 

VII.
DAWN

 
Not knowing when the dawn will come
  I open every door;
Or has it feathers like a bird,
  Or billows like a shore?
 

VIII

 
A murmur in the trees to note,
  Not loud enough for wind;
A star not far enough to seek,
  Nor near enough to find;
 
 
A long, long yellow on the lawn,
  A hubbub as of feet;
Not audible, as ours to us,
  But dapperer, more sweet;
 
 
A hurrying home of little men
  To houses unperceived, —
All this, and more, if I should tell,
  Would never be believed.
 
 
Of robins in the trundle bed
  How many I espy
Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings,
  Although I heard them try!
 
 
But then I promised ne'er to tell;
  How could I break my word?
So go your way and I'll go mine, —
  No fear you'll miss the road.
 

IX

 
Morning is the place for dew,
  Corn is made at noon,
After dinner light for flowers,
  Dukes for setting sun!
 

X

 
To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
  The bushes they were bells;
I could not find a privacy
  From Nature's sentinels.
 
 
In cave if I presumed to hide,
  The walls began to tell;
Creation seemed a mighty crack
  To make me visible.
 

XI.
A ROSE

 
A sepal, petal, and a thorn
  Upon a common summer's morn,
A flash of dew, a bee or two,
A breeze
A caper in the trees, —
  And I'm a rose!
 

XII

 
High from the earth I heard a bird;
  He trod upon the trees
As he esteemed them trifles,
  And then he spied a breeze,
And situated softly
  Upon a pile of wind
Which in a perturbation
  Nature had left behind.
A joyous-going fellow
  I gathered from his talk,
Which both of benediction
  And badinage partook,
Without apparent burden,
  I learned, in leafy wood
He was the faithful father
  Of a dependent brood;
And this untoward transport
  His remedy for care, —
A contrast to our respites.
  How different we are!
 

XIII.
COBWEBS

 
The spider as an artist
  Has never been employed
Though his surpassing merit
  Is freely certified
 
 
By every broom and Bridget
  Throughout a Christian land.
Neglected son of genius,
  I take thee by the hand.
 

XIV.
A WELL

 
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
Can stand so close and look so bold
  At what is dread to me.
 
 
Related somehow they may be, —
  The sedge stands next the sea,
Where he is floorless, yet of fear
  No evidence gives he.
 
 
But nature is a stranger yet;
  The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
  Nor simplified her ghost.
 
 
To pity those that know her not
  Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
  The nearer her they get.