• Where Ships of Purple — gently toss —

    On Seas of Daffodil —

    Fantastic Sailors — mingle —

    And then — the Wharf is still!

  • Whether my bark went down at sea,

    Whether she met with gales,

    Whether to isles enchanted

    She bent her docile sails ;


    By what mystic mooring

    She is held to-day, —

    This is the errand of the eye

    Out upon the...

  • Whether they have forgotten

    Or are forgetting now

    Or never remembered —

    Safer not to know —


    Miseries of conjecture

    Are a softer woe

    Than a Fact of Iron

    Hardened with I know —

  • Which is best? Heaven —

    Or only Heaven to come

    With that old Codicil of Doubt?

    I cannot help esteem


    The "Bird within the Hand"

    Superior to the one

    The "Bush" may yield me

    Or may not

    Too late to choose again.

  • Which is the best — the Moon or the Crescent?

    Neither — said the Moon —

    That is best which is not — Achieve it —

    You efface the Sheen.


    Not of detention is Fruition —

    Shudder to attain.

    Transport's decomposition follows —

    He is Prism born.

  • Which misses most,

    The hand that tends,

    Or heart so gently borne,

    'Tis twice as heavy as it was

    Because the hand is gone?


    Which blesses most,

    The lip that can,

    Or that that went to sleep


    With "if I could" endeavoring

    Without the strength to shape?

    ...

  • While Asters —

    On the Hill —

    Their Everlasting fashions — set —

    And Covenant Gentians — Frill!

  • While it is alive

    Until Death touches it

    While it and I lap one Air

    Dwell in one Blood

    Under one Sacrament

    Show me Division can split or pare —


    Love is like Life — merely longer

    Love is like Death, during the Grave

    Love is the Fellow of the Resurrection

    Scooping...

  • While we were fearing it, it came —

    But came with less of fear

    Because that fearing it so long

    Had almost made it fair —


    There is a Fitting — a Dismay —

    A Fitting — a Despair

    'Tis harder knowing it is Due

    Than knowing it is Here.


    They Trying on the Utmost

    ...

  • Who abdicated Ambush

    And went the way of Dusk,

    And now against his subtle Name

    There stands an Asterisk

    As confident of him as we —

    Impregnable we are —

    The whole of Immortality

    Secreted in a Star.