• That is solemn we have ended

    Be it but a Play

    Or a Glee among the Garret

    Or a Holiday


    Or a leaving Home, or later,

    Parting with a World

    We have understood for better

    Still to be explained.

  • That it will never come again

    Is what makes life so sweet.

    Believing what we don't believe

    Does not exhilarate.


    That if it be, it be at best

    An ablative estate —

    This instigates an appetite

    Precisely opposite.

  • That she forgot me was the least

    I felt it second pain

    That I was worthy to forget

    Was most I thought upon.


    Faithful was all that I could boast

    But Constancy became

    To her, by her innominate,

    A something like a shame.

  • That Such have died enable Us

    The tranquiller to die —

    That Such have lived,

    Certificate for Immortality.

  • That this should feel the need of Death

    The same as those that lived

    Is such a Feat of Irony

    As never was — achieved —


    Not satisfied to ape the Great

    In his simplicity

    The small must die, as well as He —

    Oh the Audacity —

  • The Admirations — and Contempts — of time —

    Show justest — through an Open Tomb —

    The Dying — as it were a Height

    Reorganizes Estimate

    And what We saw not

    We distinguish clear —

    And mostly — see not

    What We saw before —


    'Tis Compound Vision —

    Light — enabling...

  • The Angle of a Landscape —

    That every time I wake —

    Between my Curtain and the Wall

    Upon an ample Crack —


    Like a Venetian — waiting —

    Accosts my open eye —

    Is just a Bough of Apples —

    Held slanting, in the Sky —


    The Pattern of a Chimney —

    The Forehead of a...

  •   The time for toil is past, and night has come,—

          The last and saddest of the harvest-eves;

      Worn out with labor long and wearisome,

      Drooping and faint, the reapers hasten home,

              Each laden with his sheaves.


      Last of the laborers thy feet I gain,

          Lord of the harvest! and my...

  • The Auctioneer of Parting

    His "Going, going, gone"

    Shouts even from the Crucifix,

    And brings his Hammer down —

    He only sells the Wilderness,

    The prices of Despair

    Range from a single human Heart

    To Two — not any more —