A Noiseless, Patient Spider (p. 67)
A NOISELESS,
patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast
surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my
Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded,
surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly
musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge
you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor
hold;
Till the
gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
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#214 I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed—(p. 72)
I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the
Yield such an alcohol!
Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!
#324 Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church (p. 77)
SOME keep the Sabbath going to church;
With a bobolink for a chorister,
Some keep the Sabbath in surplice; 5
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
God preaches,—a noted clergyman,—
And the sermon is never long; 10
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I ’m going all along!
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#328 A Bird Came Down the Walk (p. 77)
A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.
He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head
Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home
#341 After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes— (p.78)
After great pain a formal
feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
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
#79 Much Madness is Divinest
Sense (p. 435)
MUCH madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails. 5
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
#441 This is My Letter to the
World (p. 79)
THIS is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,—
The simple news that Nature told,
With
tender majesty.
Her message is committed 5
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
#465 I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died (p.80)
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.
#585 I Like to See It Lap the Miles
(p.84)
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And
neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop--docile and omnipotent--
At its own stable door.
#640 I Cannot Live with You (p.85)
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 broken;
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
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 keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale sustenance,
Despair!
#712 Because I Could Not Stop For Death
(p. 87)
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 labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, be passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
We paused before house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
#754 My
Life Has Stood—A Loaded Gun (p.88)
My Life had stood - a Loaded
Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
And now We roam in
Sovereign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him -
The Mountains straight reply -
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through -
And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master's Head -
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow - to have shared -
To foe of His - I'm deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -
Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without--the power to die—
#986 A
Narrow Fellow (89)
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.
#1263 There is No Frigate Like a Book (p.92)
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!
#1732 My Life Closed Twice (p.95)
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.