Journey 2 Being

THE soul should always stand ajar.

That if the heaven inquire,

He will not be obliged to wait,

Or shy of troubling her.

Depart, before the host has slid

The bolt upon the door,

To seek for the accomplished guest—

Her visitor no more.

THERE’S something quieter than sleep

Within this inner room!

It wears a sprig upon its breast,

And will not tell its name.

Some touch it and some kiss it,

Some chafe its idle hand;

It has a simple gravity

I do not understand!

While simple-hearted neighbors

Chat of the “early dead”,

We, prone to periphrasis,

Remark that birds have fled!

THE dying need but little, dear,—

A glass of water’s all,

A flower’s unobtrusive face

To punctuate the wall,

A fan, perhaps, a friend’s regret,

And certainly that one

No color in the rainbow

Perceives when you are gone.

TIE the strings to my life, my Lord,

Then I am ready to go!

Just a look at the horses—

Rapid! That will do!

Put me in on the firmest side,

So I shall never fall;

For we must ride to the Judgment,

And it’s partly down hill.

But never I mind the bridges,

And never I mind the sea;

Held fast in everlasting race

By my own choice and thee.

Good-by to the life I used to live,

And the world I used to know;

And kiss the hills for me, just once;

Now I am ready to go!

SO proud she was to die

It made us all ashamed

That what we cherished, so unknown

To her desire seemed.

So satisfied to go

Where none of us should be,

Immediately, that anguish stooped

Almost to jealousy.

SUPERFLUOUS were the sun

When excellence is dead;

He were superfluous every day,

For every day is said

That syllable whose faith

Just saves it from despair,

And whose “I ’ll meet you” hesitates—

If love inquire, “Where?”

Upon his dateless fame

Our periods may lie,

As stars that drop anonymous

From an abundant sky.

A SICKNESS of this world it most occasions

When best men die;

A wishfulness their far condition

To occupy.

A chief indifference, as foreign

A world must be

Themselves forsake contented,

For Deity.

I SING to use the waiting,

My bonnet but to tie,

And shut the door unto my house;

No more to do have I,

Till, his best step approaching,

We journey to the day,

And tell each other how we sang

To keep the dark away.

I MEANT to find her when I came;

Death had the same design;

But the success was his, it seems,

And the discomfit mine.

I meant to tell her how I longed

For just this single time;

But Death had told her so the first,

And she had hearkened him.

To wander now is my abode;

To rest,—to rest would be

A privilege of hurricane

To memory and me.

I FELT a funeral in my brain,

And mourners, to and fro,

Kept treading, treading, till it seemed

That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,

A service like a drum

Kept beating, beating, till I thought

My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,

And creak across my soul

With those same boots of lead, again.

Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,

And Being but an ear,

And I and silence some strange race,

Wrecked, solitary, here.