The Sunset stopped on Cottages
Where Sunset hence must be
For treason not of His, but Life's,
Gone Westerly, Today —
The Sunset stopped on Cottages
Where Morning just begun —
What difference, after all, Thou mak'st
Thou supercilious Sun?
-
-
The sweetest Heresy received
That Man and Woman know —
Each Other's Convert —
Though the Faith accommodate but Two —
The Churches are so frequent —
The Ritual — so small —
The Grace so unavoidable —
To fail — is Infidel — -
The Sweets of Pillage, can be known
To no one but the Thief —
Compassion for Integrity
Is his divinest Grief — -
The Symptom of the Gale —
The Second of Dismay —
Between its Rumor and its Face —
Is almost Revelry —
The Houses firmer root —
The Heavens cannot be found —
The Upper Surfaces of things
Take covert in the Ground —
The Mem'ry of the Sun
Not Any can recall —...Would my Delia know if I love, let her take
My last thought at night, and the first when I wake;
With my prayers and best wishes preferr'd for her sake.
Let her guess what I muse on, when rambling alone
I stride o'er the stubble each day with my gun,
Never ready to shoot till the covey is flown.
...I sing the Sofa. I, who lately sang
Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touch'd with awe
The solemn chords, and with a trembling hand,
Escap'd with pain from that advent'rous flight,
Now seek repose upon an humbler theme;
The theme though humble, yet august and proud
Th' occasion ─ for the Fair commands the...Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick, with ev'ry day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.
There is...As one who, long in thickets and in brakes
Entangled, winds now this way and now that
His devious course uncertain, seeking home;
Or, having long in miry ways been foil'd,
And sore discomfited, from slough to slough
Plunging, and half despairing of escape;
If chance at length he finds a greensward smooth...Hark! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright; —
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumb'...'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires th' horizon: while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
...