Water makes many Beds
For those averse to sleep -
It's awful chamber open stands -
It's Curtains blandly sweep -
Abhorrent is the Rest
In undulating Rooms
Whose Amplitude no end invades -
Whose Axis never comes.
To earn it by disdaining it
Is Fame's consummate Fee -
He loves what spurns him -
Look behind - He is pursuing thee -
So let us gather - every Day -
The Aggregate of Life's Bouquet
Be Honor and not shame.
The pretty Rain from those sweet Eaves
Her unintending Eyes -
Took her own Heart, including our's,
By innocent Surprise -
The wrestle in her simple throat
To hold the feeling down
That vanquished her - defeated Feat -
Was Fervor's sudden Crown.
The inundation of the Spring
Enlarges every Soul -
It sweeps the - tenements - away
But leaves the Water whole -
In which the Soul at first estranged -
Seeks faintly for it's shore -
But acclimated - pines no more
For that Peninsula.
The Gentian has a parched Corolla -
Like Azure dried
'Tis Nature's buoyant juices
Beatified -
Without a vaunt or sheen
As casual as Rain
And as benign -
When most is past - it comes -
Nor isolate it seems -
It's Bond it's Friend -
To fill it's Fringed career
And aid an aged Year
Abundant end -
It's lot - were it forgot -
This truth endear -
Fidelity is gain
Creation o'er.
The fairest Home I ever knew
Was founded in an Hour
By Parties also that I knew
A spider and a Flower -
A manse of mechlin and of Floss.
Summer has two Beginnings -
Beginning once in June -
Beginning in October
Affectingly again -
Without, perhaps, the Riot
But graphicer for Grace -
As finer is a going
Than a remaining Face -
Departing then - forever -
Forever - until May -
Forever is deciduous -
Except to those who die.
Such are the inlets of the mind -
His outlets - would you see
Ascend with me the eminence
Of Immortality.
One Joy of so much anguish
Sweet Nature has for me -
I shun it as I do Despair
Or dear iniquity -
Why Birds, a Summer morning
Before the Quick of Day
Should stab my ravished Spirit
With Dirks of Melody
Is part of an inquiry
That will receive reply
When Flesh and Spirit sunder
In Death's immediately.
It was a quiet seeming Day -
There was no harm in earth or sky -
Till with the setting sun
There strayed an accidental Red
A strolling Hue, one would have said
To westward of the Town -
But when the Earth begun to jar
And Houses vanished with a roar
And Human Nature hid
We comprehended by the Awe
As those that Dissolution saw
The Poppy in the Cloud.