We like March, his shoes are purple,
He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder’s tongue his coming,
And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and mighty
That our minds are hot.
News is he of all the others;
Bold it were to die
With the blue-birds buccaneering
On his British sky
Victory comes late,
And is held low to freezing lips
Too rapt with frost
To take it.
How sweet it would have tasted,
Just a drop!
Was God so economical?
His table’s spread too high for us
Unless we dine on tip-toe.
Crumbs fit such little mouths,
Cherries suit robins;
The eagle’s golden breakfast
Strangles them.
God keeps his oath to sparrows,
Who of little love
Know how to starve!
Two butterflies went out at noon
And waltzed above a stream,
Then stepped straight through the firmament
And rested on a beam;
And then together bore away
Upon a shining sea,–
Though never yet, in any port
Their coming mentioned be.
If spoken by the distant bird,
If met in ether sea
By frigate or by merchantman,
Report was not to me.
‘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
To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
The bushes they were bells;
I could not find a privacy
From Nature’s sentinels.
In cave if I presumed to hide,
The walls began to tell;
Creation seemed a mighty crack
To make me visible.
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 lives,
And the world I used to know;
And kiss the hills for me, just once;
Now I am ready to go!
The thought beneath so slight a film
Is more distincly seen, –
As laces just reveal the surge,
Or mists the Apennine
After great pain, a formal feeling comes–
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Toombs–
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round–
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought–
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone–
This is the Hour of Lead–
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow–
First–Chill–then Stupor–then the letting go
Elysium is as far as to
The very nearest Room
If in that Room a Friend await
Felicity or Doom–
What fortitude the Soul contains
That it can so endure
The accent of a coming Foot–
The opening of a Door–
Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?
Then crouch within the door –
Red — is the Fire’s common tint –
But when the vivid Ore
Has vanquished Flame’s conditions,
It quivers from the Forge
Without a color, but the light
Of unanointed Blaze.
Least Village has its Blacksmith
Whose Anvil’s even ring
Stands symbol for the finer Forge
That soundless tugs — within –
Re[f]ining these impatient Ores
With Hammer, and with Blaze
Untile the Designated Light
Repudiate the Forge —
