To learn the Transport by the Pain
As Blind Men learn the sun!
To die of thirst — suspecting
That Brooks in Meadows run!
To stay the homesick — homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore —
Haunted by native lands, the while —
And blue — beloved air!
This is the Sovereign...
To lose one's faith — surpass
The loss of an Estate —
Because Estates can be
Replenished — faith cannot —
Inherited with Life —
Belief — but once — can be —
Annihilate a single clause —
And Being's — Beggary —
To lose thee — sweeter than to gain
All other hearts I knew.
'Tis true the drought is destitute,
But then, I had the dew!
The Caspian has its realms of sand,
Its other realm of sea.
Without the sterile perquisite,
No Caspian could be.
To love thee Year by Year —
May less appear
Than sacrifice, and cease —
However, dear,
Forever might be short, I thought to show —
And so I pieced it, with a flower, now.
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
To make One's Toilette — after Death
Has made the Toilette cool
Of only Taste we cared to please
Is difficult, and still —
That's easier — than Braid the Hair —
And make the Bodice gay —
When eyes that fondled it are wrenched
By Decalogues — away —
To make Routine a Stimulus
Remember it can cease —
Capacity to Terminate
Is a Specific Grace —
Of Retrospect the Arrow
That power to repair
Departed with the Torment
Become, alas, more fair —
THE twentieth year is well-nigh past,
Since first our sky was overcast;
Ah would that this might be the last!
My Mary!
Thy spirits have a fainter flow,
I see thee daily weaker grow —
'Twas my distress that brought thee...
To mend each tattered Faith
There is a needle fair
Though no appearance indicate —
'Tis threaded in the Air —
And though it do not wear
As if it never Tore
'Tis very comfortable indeed
And spacious as before —
Eliza, when the southern gale
Expands the broad majestic sail,
While Friendship breathes the parting sigh,
And sorrow glitters in each eye,
The vessel leaves the flying shores,
Receding spires and less'ning tow'rs;
And as it cleaves the lucid sea,
The distant tumult dies away:...