Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
A Book
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
The Bustle in a House
The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth, -
The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.
Come slowly, Eden!
Come slowly, Eden!
lips unused to thee,
Bashful, sip thy jasmines,
As the fainting bee,
Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums,
Counts his nectars --enters,
And is lost in balms!
Death Sets A Thing
Death sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly
To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With "This was last her fingers did,"
Industrious until
The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then 't was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.
A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him,--
At rest his fingers are.
Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.
Heart, we will forget him!
Heart, we will forget him!
You an I, tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.
When you have done, pray tell me
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you're lagging.
I may remember him!
Hope is the Thing with Feathers
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
I Felt a Funeral in My Brain
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.
I Went to Heaven
I went to heaven, -
'Twas a small town,
Lit with a ruby,
Lathed with down.
Stiller than the fields
At the full dew,
Beautiful as pictures
No man drew.
People like the moth,
Of mechlin, frames,
Duties of gossamer,
And eider names.
Almost contented
I could be
'Mong such unique
Society.
The Mystery of Pain
Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.
It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.
A Narrow Fellow in the Grass
A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice sudden is.
The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.
He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,
Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;
But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.
The Only News I Know
The only news I know
Is bulletins all day
From Immortality.
The only shows I see,
Tomorrow and Today,
Perchance Eternity.
The only One I meet
Is God, -the only street,
Existance; this traversed
If other news there be,
Or admirabler show -
I'll tell it you.
When Roses Cease To Bloom, Dear
When roses cease to bloom, dear
and violets are done,
When bumblebees in solemn flight
Have passed beyond the sun,
The hand that paused to gather
Upon this summer's day
Will idle lie, in Auburn.--
Then take my flower, pray!
I Cannot Live With You
I cannot live with You--
It would be Life--
And Life is over there--
Behind the Shelf
The Sexton keeps the Key to--
Putting up
Our Life--His Porcelain--
Like a Cup--
Discarded of the Housewife--
Quaint--or Broke--
A newer Sevres pleases--
Old Ones crack--
I could not die--with You--
For One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down--
You--could not--
And I--could I stand by
And see You--freeze--
Without my Right of Frost--
Death's privilege?
Nor could I rise--with You--
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus'--
That New Grace
Glow plain--and foreign
On my homesick Eye--
Except that You than He
Shone closer by--
They'd judge Us--How--
For You--served Heaven--You know,
Or sought to--
I could not--
Because You saturated Sight--
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise
And were You lost, I would be--
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame--
And were You--saved--
And I--condemned to be
Where You were not--
That self--were Hell to Me--
So We must meet apart--
You there--I--here--
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are--and Prayer--
And that White Sustenance--
Despair--
I Heard A Fly Buzz
I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air--
Between the Heaves of Storm--
The Eyes around--had wrung them dry--
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset--when the King
Be witnessed--in the Room--
I willed my Keepsakes--Signed away
What portions of me be
Assignable--and then it was
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--
The Heart asks Pleasure — first
The Heart asks Pleasure — first —
And then — Excuse from Pain —
And then — those little Anodynes
That deaden suffering —
And then — to go to sleep —
And then — if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor
The privilege to die —
My life closed twice before its close
My life closed twice before its close —
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.