I.-

This world is not conclusion;
  A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
  But positive, as sound. 
It beckons and it baffles;
  Philosophies don’t know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
  Sagacity must go. 
To guess it puzzles scholars;
  To gain it, men have shown
Contempt of generations,
  And crucifixion known.

II.-

We learn in the retreating
  How vast an one
Was recently among us. 
  A perished sun

Endears in the departure
  How doubly more
Than all the golden presence
  It was before!

III.-

They say that ‘time assuages,’ ­
  Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
  As sinews do, with age.

Time is a test of trouble,
  But not a remedy. 
If such it prove, it prove too
  There was no malady.

IV.-

We cover thee, sweet face. 
  Not that we tire of thee,
But that thyself fatigue of us;
  Remember, as thou flee,
We follow thee until
  Thou notice us no more,
And then, reluctant, turn away
  To con thee o’er and o’er,
And blame the scanty love
  We were content to show,
Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold
  If thou would’st take it now.

V. Ending.

That is solemn we have ended, ­
  Be it but a play,
Or a glee among the garrets,
  Or a holiday,

Or a leaving home; or later,
  Parting with a world
We have understood, for better
  Still it be unfurled.

VI.-

The stimulus, beyond the grave
  His countenance to see,
Supports me like imperial drams
  Afforded royally.

VII.-

Given in marriage unto thee,
  Oh, thou celestial host! 
Bride of the Father and the Son,
  Bride of the Holy Ghost!

Other betrothal shall dissolve,
  Wedlock of will decay;
Only the keeper of this seal
  Conquers mortality.

VIII.-

That such have died enables us
  The tranquiller to die;
That such have lived, certificate
  For immortality.

IX.-

They won’t frown always, ­ some sweet day
  When I forget to tease,
They’ll recollect how cold I looked,
  And how I just said ‘please.’

Then they will hasten to the door
  To call the little child,
Who cannot thank them, for the ice
  That on her lisping piled.

X. Immortality.

It is an honorable thought,
  And makes one lift one’s hat,
As one encountered gentlefolk
  Upon a daily street,

That we’ve immortal place,
  Though pyramids decay,
And kingdoms, like the orchard,
  Flit russetly away.

XI.-

The distance that the dead have gone
  Does not at first appear;
Their coming back seems possible
  For many an ardent year.

And then, that we have followed them
  We more than half suspect,
So intimate have we become
  With their dear retrospect.

XII.-

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,
  Bequeaths him to the night. 
In deference to him
  Extinct be every hum,
Whose garden wrestles with the dew,
  At daybreak overcome!

XIII.  Death.

Death is like the insect
  Menacing the tree,
Competent to kill it,
  But decoyed may be.

Bait it with the balsam,
  Seek it with the knife,
Baffle, if it cost you
  Everything in life.

Then, if it have burrowed
  Out of reach of skill,
Ring the tree and leave it, ­
  ’T is the vermin’s will.

XIV.  UNWARNED.

’T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou
  No station in the day? 
’T was not thy wont to hinder so, ­
  Retrieve thine industry.

’T is noon, my little maid, alas! 
  And art thou sleeping yet? 
The lily waiting to be wed,
  The bee, dost thou forget?

My little maid, ’t is night; alas,
  That night should be to thee
Instead of morning!  Hadst thou broached
  Thy little plan to me,
Dissuade thee if I could not, sweet,
  I might have aided thee.

XV.-

Each that we lose takes part of us;
  A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
  Is summoned by the tides.

XVI.-

Not any higher stands the grave
  For heroes than for men;
Not any nearer for the child
  Than numb three-score and ten.

This latest leisure equal lulls
  The beggar and his queen;
Propitiate this democrat
  By summer’s gracious mien.

XVII.  Asleep.

As far from pity as complaint,
  As cool to speech as stone,
As numb to revelation
  As if my trade were bone.

As far from time as history,
  As near yourself to-day
As children to the rainbow’s scarf,
  Or sunset’s yellow play

To eyelids in the sepulchre. 
  How still the dancer lies,
While color’s revelations break,
  And blaze the butterflies!

XVIII.  The spirit.

’T is whiter than an Indian pipe,
  ’T is dimmer than a lace;
No stature has it, like a fog,
  When you approach the place.

Not any voice denotes it here,
  Or intimates it there;
A spirit, how doth it accost? 
  What customs hath the air?

This limitless hyperbole
  Each one of us shall be;
’T is drama, if (hypothesis)
  It be not tragedy!

XIX.  The Monument.

She laid her docile crescent down,
  And this mechanic stone
Still states, to dates that have forgot,
  The news that she is gone.

So constant to its stolid trust,
  The shaft that never knew,
It shames the constancy that fled
  Before its emblem flew.

XX.-

Bless God, he went as soldiers,
  His musket on his breast;
Grant, God, he charge the bravest
  Of all the martial blest.

Please God, might I behold him
  In epauletted white,
I should not fear the foe then,
  I should not fear the fight.

XXI.-

Immortal is an ample word
  When what we need is by,
But when it leaves us for a time,
  ’T is a necessity.

Of heaven above the firmest proof
  We fundamental know,
Except for its marauding hand,
  It had been heaven below.

XXII.-

Where every bird is bold to go,
  And bees abashless play,
The foreigner before he knocks
  Must thrust the tears away.

XXIII.-

The grave my little cottage is,
  Where, keeping house for thee,
I make my parlor orderly,
  And lay the marble tea,

For two divided, briefly,
  A cycle, it may be,
Till everlasting life unite
  In strong society.

XXIV.-

This was in the white of the year,
  That was in the green,
Drifts were as difficult then to think
  As daisies now to be seen.

Looking back is best that is left,
  Or if it be before,
Retrospection is prospect’s half,
  Sometimes almost more.

XXV.-

Sweet hours have perished here;
  This is a mighty room;
Within its precincts hopes have played, ­
  Now shadows in the tomb.

XXVI.-

Me!  Come!  My dazzled face
In such a shining place!

Me!  Hear!  My foreign ear
The sounds of welcome near!

The saints shall meet
Our bashful feet.

My holiday shall be
That they remember me;

My paradise, the fame
That they pronounce my name.

XXVII.  Invisible.

From us she wandered now a year,
  Her tarrying unknown;
If wilderness prevent her feet,
  Or that ethereal zone

No eye hath seen and lived,
  We ignorant must be. 
We only know what time of year
  We took the mystery.

XXVIII.-

I wish I knew that woman’s name,
  So, when she comes this way,
To hold my life, and hold my ears,
  For fear I hear her say

She’s ‘sorry I am dead,’ again,
  Just when the grave and I
Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, ­
  Our only lullaby.

XXIX.  Trying to forget.

Bereaved of all, I went abroad,
  No less bereaved to be
Upon a new peninsula, ­
  The grave preceded me,

Obtained my lodgings ere myself,
  And when I sought my bed,
The grave it was, reposed upon
  The pillow for my head.

I waked, to find it first awake,
  I rose, ­ it followed me;
I tried to drop it in the crowd,
  To lose it in the sea,

In cups of artificial drowse
  To sleep its shape away, ­
The grave was finished, but the spade
  Remained in memory.

XXX.-

I felt a funeral in my brain,
  And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
  That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
  A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
  My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
  And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again. 
  Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
  And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
  Wrecked, solitary, here.

XXXI.-

I meant to find her when I came;
  Death had the same design;
But the success was his, it seems,
  And the discomfit mine.

I meant to tell her how I longed
  For just this single time;
But Death had told her so the first,
  And she had hearkened him.

To wander now is my abode;
  To rest, ­ to rest would be
A privilege of hurricane
  To memory and me.

XXXII.  Waiting.

I sing to use the waiting,
  My bonnet but to tie,
And shut the door unto my house;
  No more to do have I,

Till, his best step approaching,
  We journey to the day,
And tell each other how we sang
  To keep the dark away.

XXXIII.-

A sickness of this world it most occasions
  When best men die;
A wishfulness their far condition
  To occupy.

A chief indifference, as foreign
  A world must be
Themselves forsake contented,
  For Deity.

XXXIV.-

Superfluous were the sun
  When excellence is dead;
He were superfluous every day,
  For every day is said

That syllable whose faith
  Just saves it from despair,
And whose ‘I’ll meet you’ hesitates
  If love inquire, ‘Where?’

Upon his dateless fame
  Our periods may lie,
As stars that drop anonymous
  From an abundant sky.

XXXV.-

So proud she was to die
  It made us all ashamed
That what we cherished, so unknown
  To her desire seemed.

So satisfied to go
  Where none of us should be,
Immediately, that anguish stooped
  Almost to jealousy.

XXXVI.  Farewell.

Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,
  Then I am ready to go! 
Just a look at the horses ­
  Rapid!  That will do!

Put me in on the firmest side,
  So I shall never fall;
For we must ride to the Judgment,
  And it’s partly down hill.

But never I mind the bridges,
  And never I mind the sea;
Held fast in everlasting race
  By my own choice and thee.

Good-by to the life I used to live,
  And the world I used to know;
And kiss the hills for me, just once;
  Now I am ready to go!

XXXVII.-

The dying need but little, dear, ­
  A glass of water’s all,
A flower’s unobtrusive face
  To punctuate the wall,

A fan, perhaps, a friend’s regret,
  And certainly that one
No color in the rainbow
  Perceives when you are gone.

XXXVIII.  Dead.

There’s something quieter than sleep
  Within this inner room! 
It wears a sprig upon its breast,
  And will not tell its name.

Some touch it and some kiss it,
  Some chafe its idle hand;
It has a simple gravity
  I do not understand!

While simple-hearted neighbors
  Chat of the ‘early dead,’
We, prone to periphrasis,
  Remark that birds have fled!

XXXIX.-

The soul should always stand ajar,
  That if the heaven inquire,
He will not be obliged to wait,
  Or shy of troubling her.

Depart, before the host has slid
  The bolt upon the door,
To seek for the accomplished guest, ­
  Her visitor no more.

XL.-

Three weeks passed since I had seen her, ­
  Some disease had vexed;
’T was with text and village singing
  I beheld her next,

And a company ­ our pleasure
  To discourse alone;
Gracious now to me as any,
  Gracious unto none.

Borne, without dissent of either,
  To the parish night;
Of the separated people
  Which are out of sight?

XLI.-

I breathed enough to learn the trick,
  And now, removed from air,
I simulate the breath so well,
  That one, to be quite sure

The lungs are stirless, must descend
  Among the cunning cells,
And touch the pantomime himself. 
  How cool the bellows feels!

XLII.-

I wonder if the sepulchre
  Is not a lonesome way,
When men and boys, and larks and June
  Go down the fields to hay!

XLIII.  Joy in death.

If tolling bell I ask the cause. 
  ‘A soul has gone to God,’
I’m answered in a lonesome tone;
  Is heaven then so sad?

That bells should joyful ring to tell
  A soul had gone to heaven,
Would seem to me the proper way
  A good news should be given.

XLIV.-

If I may have it when it’s dead
  I will contented be;
If just as soon as breath is out
  It shall belong to me,

Until they lock it in the grave,
  ’T is bliss I cannot weigh,
For though they lock thee in the grave,
  Myself can hold the key.

Think of it, lover!  I and thee
  Permitted face to face to be;
After a life, a death we’ll say, ­
  For death was that, and this is thee.

XLV.-

Before the ice is in the pools,
  Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
  Is tarnished by the snow,

Before the fields have finished,
  Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
  Will arrive to me!

What we touch the hems of
  On a summer’s day;
What is only walking
  Just a bridge away;

That which sings so, speaks so,
  When there’s no one here, ­
Will the frock I wept in
  Answer me to wear?

XLVI.  Dying.

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
  The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
  Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
  And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
  Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
  What portion of me I
Could make assignable, ­ and then
  There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
  Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
  I could not see to see.

XLVII.-

Adrift!  A little boat adrift! 
  And night is coming down! 
Will no one guide a little boat
  Unto the nearest town?

So sailors say, on yesterday,
  Just as the dusk was brown,
One little boat gave up its strife,
  And gurgled down and down.

But angels say, on yesterday,
  Just as the dawn was red,
One little boat o’erspent with gales
Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
  Exultant, onward sped!

XLVIII.-

There’s been a death in the opposite house
  As lately as to-day. 
I know it by the numb look
  Such houses have alway.

The neighbors rustle in and out,
  The doctor drives away. 
A window opens like a pod,
  Abrupt, mechanically;

Somebody flings a mattress out, ­
  The children hurry by;
They wonder if It died on that, ­
  I used to when a boy.

The minister goes stiffly in
  As if the house were his,
And he owned all the mourners now,
  And little boys besides;

And then the milliner, and the man
  Of the appalling trade,
To take the measure of the house. 
  There’ll be that dark parade

Of tassels and of coaches soon;
  It’s easy as a sign, ­
The intuition of the news
  In just a country town.

XLIX.-

We never know we go, ­ when we are going
  We jest and shut the door;
Fate following behind us bolts it,
  And we accost no more.

L.The soul’s storm.

It struck me every day
  The lightning was as new
As if the cloud that instant slit
  And let the fire through.

It burned me in the night,
  It blistered in my dream;
It sickened fresh upon my sight
  With every morning’s beam.

I thought that storm was brief, ­
  The maddest, quickest by;
But Nature lost the date of this,
  And left it in the sky.

LI.-

Water is taught by thirst;
Land, by the oceans passed;
  Transport, by throe;
Peace, by its battles told;
Love, by memorial mould;
  Birds, by the snow.

LII.  Thirst.

We thirst at first, ­ ’t is Nature’s act;
  And later, when we die,
A little water supplicate
  Of fingers going by.

It intimates the finer want,
  Whose adequate supply
Is that great water in the west
  Termed immortality.

LIII.-

A clock stopped ­ not the mantel’s;
  Geneva’s farthest skill
Can’t put the puppet bowing
  That just now dangled still.

An awe came on the trinket! 
  The figures hunched with pain,
Then quivered out of decimals
  Into degreeless noon.

It will not stir for doctors,
  This pendulum of snow;
The shopman importunes it,
  While cool, concernless No

Nods from the gilded pointers,
  Nods from the seconds slim,
Decades of arrogance between
  The dial life and him.

LIV.  Charlotte BRONTE’S grave.

All overgrown by cunning moss,
  All interspersed with weed,
The little cage of ‘Currer Bell,’
  In quiet Haworth laid.

This bird, observing others,
  When frosts too sharp became,
Retire to other latitudes,
  Quietly did the same,

But differed in returning;
  Since Yorkshire hills are green,
Yet not in all the nests I meet
  Can nightingale be seen.

Gathered from many wanderings,
  Gethsemane can tell
Through what transporting anguish
  She reached the asphodel!

Soft fall the sounds of Eden
  Upon her puzzled ear;
Oh, what an afternoon for heaven,
  When ‘Bronte’ entered there!

LV.-

A toad can die of light! 
Death is the common right
  Of toads and men, ­
Of earl and midge
The privilege. 
  Why swagger then? 
The gnat’s supremacy
Is large as thine.

LVI.-

Far from love the Heavenly Father
  Leads the chosen child;
Oftener through realm of briar
  Than the meadow mild,

Oftener by the claw of dragon
  Than the hand of friend,
Guides the little one predestined
  To the native land.

LVII.  Sleeping.

A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
  That makes no show for dawn
By stretch of limb or stir of lid, ­
  An independent one.

Was ever idleness like this? 
  Within a hut of stone
To bask the centuries away
  Nor once look up for noon?

LVIII.  Retrospect.

’T was just this time last year I died. 
  I know I heard the corn,
When I was carried by the farms, ­
  It had the tassels on.

I thought how yellow it would look
  When Richard went to mill;
And then I wanted to get out,
  But something held my will.

I thought just how red apples wedged
  The stubble’s joints between;
And carts went stooping round the fields
  To take the pumpkins in.

I wondered which would miss me least,
  And when Thanksgiving came,
If father’d multiply the plates
  To make an even sum.

And if my stocking hung too high,
  Would it blur the Christmas glee,
That not a Santa Claus could reach
  The altitude of me?

But this sort grieved myself, and so
  I thought how it would be
When just this time, some perfect year,
  Themselves should come to me.

LIX.  Eternity.

On this wondrous sea,
Sailing silently,
  Ho! pilot, ho! 
Knowest thou the shore
Where no breakers roar,
  Where the storm is o’er?

In the silent west
Many sails at rest,
  Their anchors fast;
Thither I pilot thee, ­
Land, ho!  Eternity! 
  Ashore at last!