Love can do all but raise the Dead
I doubt if even that
From such a giant were withheld
Were flesh equivalent
But love is tired and must sleep,
And hungry and must graze
And so abets the shining Fleet
Till it is out of gaze.
"Lethe" in my flower,
Of which they who drink,
In the fadeless Orchards
Hear the bobolink!
Merely flake or petal
As the Eye beholds
Jupiter! My father!
I perceive the rose!
I've got an arrow here.
Loving the hand that sent it
I the dart revere.
Fell, they will say, in "skirmish"!
Vanquished, my soul will know
By but a simple arrow
Sped by an archer's bow.
If ever the lid gets off my head
And lets the brain away
The fellow will go where he belonged -
Without a hint from me,
And the world - if the world be looking on -
Will see how far from home
It is possible for sense to live
The soul there - all the time.
If all the griefs I am to have
Would only come today,
I am so happy I believe
They'd laugh and run away.
If all the joys I am to have
Would only come today,
They could not be so big as this
That happens to me now.
I took one Draught of Life -
I'll tell you what I paid -
Precisely an existence -
The market price, they said.
They weighed me, Dust by Dust -
They balanced Film with Film,
Then handed me my Being's worth -
A single Dram of Heaven!
How dare the robins sing,
When men and women hear
Who since they went to their account
Have settled with the year! -
Paid all that life had earned
In one consummate bill.
And now, what life or death can do
Is immaterial.
Insulting is the sun
To him whose mortal light
Beguiled of immortality
Bequeath him to the night.
Extinct be every hum
In deference to him
Whose garden wrestled with the dew,
At daybreak overcome!
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 subsequently learned
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!
Her face was in a bed of hair,
Like flowers in a plot -
Her hand was whiter than the sperm
That feeds the sacred light.
Her tongue more tender than the tune
That totters in the leaves -
Who hears may be incredulous,
Who witnesses, believes.
It was a quiet Way -
He asked if I was His -
I made no answer of the Tongue,
But answer of the Eyes -
And then he bore me high
Before this mortal noise
With swiftness, as of Chariots -
And distance - as of Wheels -
The World did drop away
As Counties - from the feet
Of Him that leaneth in Balloon -
Upon an Ether Street -
The Gulf behind - was not -
The Continents - were new -
Eternity - it was - before
Eternity was due -
No Seasons were - to us -
It was not Night - nor Noon -
For Sunrise - stopped upon the Place -
And fastened it - in Dawn -