(103)

FROM all the jails the boys and girls

Ecstatically leap,—

Beloved, only afternoon

That prison does n’t keep.

They storm the earth and stun the air,

A mob of solid bliss.

Alas! that frowns could lie in wait

For such a foe as this!

(102)

I HAD a guinea golden;

I lost it in the sand,

And though the sum was simple,

And pounds were in the land,

Still had it such a value

Unto my frugal eye,

That when I could not find it

I sat me down to sigh.

I had a crimson robin

Who sang full many a day,

But when the woods were painted

He, too, did fly away.

Time brought me other robins,—

Their ballads were the same,—

Still for my missing troubadour

I kept the “house at hame.”

I had a star in heaven;

One Pleiad was its name,

And when I was not heeding

It wandered from the same.

And though the skies are crowded,

And all the night ashine,

I do not care about it,

Since none of them are mine.

My story has a moral:

I have a missing friend,—

Pleiad its name, and robin,

And guinea in the sand,—

And when this mournful ditty,

Accompanied with tear,

Shall meet the eye of traitor

In country far from here,

Grant that repentance solemn

May seize upon his mind,

And he no consolation

Beneath the sun may find.

(101)

A FACE devoid of love or grace,

A hateful, hard, successful face,

   A face with which a stone

Would feel as thoroughly at ease

As were they old acquaintances,—

   First time together thrown.

(100)

WHO has not found the heaven below

   Will fail of it above.

God’s residence is next to mine,

   His furniture is love.

(99)

THERE is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

(98)

WHILE I was fearing it, it came,

   But came with less of fear,

Because that fearing it so long

   Had almost made it dear.

There is a fitting a dismay,

   A fitting a despair.

’T is harder knowing it is due,

   Than knowing it is here.

The trying on the utmost,

   The morning it is new,

Is terribler than wearing it

   A whole existence through.

(97)

WE never know how high we are

   Till we are called to rise;

And then, if we are true to plan,

   Our statures touch the skies.

The heroism we recite

   Would be a daily thing,

Did not ourselves the cubits warp

   For fear to be a king.

(96)

MY life closed twice before its close;

   It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

   A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,

   As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

   And all we need of hell.

(95)

COULD mortal lip divine

   The undeveloped freight

Of a delivered syllable,

   ’T would crumble with the weight.

(94)

IF the foolish call them “flowers,”

   Need the wiser tell?

If the savants “classify” them,

   It is just as well!

Those who read the Revelations

   Must not criticise

Those who read the same edition

   With beclouded eyes!

Could we stand with that old Moses

   Canaan denied,—

Scan, like him, the stately landscape

   On the other side,—

Doubtless we should deem superfluous

   Many sciences

Not pursued by learned angels

   In scholastic skies!

Low amid that glad Belles lettres

   Grant that we may stand,

Stars, amid profound Galaxies,

At that grand “Right hand”!