Great Poems by American Women (9 page)

At westward window of a palace gray,
Which its own secret still so safely keeps
That no man now its builder's name can say,
I lie and idly sun myself to-day,
Dreaming awake far more than one who sleeps,
Serenely glad, although my gladness weeps.

 

I look across the harbor's misty blue,
And find and lose that magic shifting line
Where sky one shade less blue meets sea, and through
The air I catch one flush as if it knew
Some secret of that meeting, which no sign
Can show to eyes so far and dim as mine.

 

More ships than I can count build mast by mast
Gay lattice-work with waving green and red
Across my window-panes. The voyage past,
They crowd to anchorage so glad, so fast,
Gliding like ghosts, with noiseless breath and tread,
Mooring like ghosts, with noiseless iron and lead.

 

“O ships and patient men who fare by sea,”
I stretch my hands and vainly questioning cry,
“Sailed ye from west? How many nights could ye
Tell by the lights just where my dear and free
And lovely land lay sleeping? Passed ye by
Some danger safe, because her fires were nigh?”

 

Ah me! my selfish yearning thoughts forget
How darkness but a hand's-breadth from the coast
With danger in an evil league is set!
Ah! helpless ships and men more helpless yet,
Who trust the land-lights' short and empty boast;
The lights ye bear aloft and prayers avail ye most.

 

But I—ah, patient men who fare by sea,
Ye would but smile to hear this empty speech,—
I have such beacon-lights to burn for me,
In that dear west so lovely, new, and free,
That evil league by day, by night, can teach
No spell whose harm my little bark can reach.

 

No towers of stone uphold those beacon-lights;
No distance hides them, and no storm can shake;
In valleys they light up the darkest nights,
They outshine sunny days on sunny heights;
They blaze from every house where sleep or wake
My own who love me for my own poor sake.

 

Each thought they think of me lights road of flame
Across the seas; no travel on it tires
My heart. I go if they but speak my name;
From Heaven I should come and go the same,
And find this glow forestalling my desires.
My darlings, do you hear me? Trim the fires!

Along Ancona's hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore.

The farmer does not know

That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,
Counting the bread and wine by autumn's gain,
But I,—I smile to think that days remain
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

 

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,

 

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

 

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,—
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

 

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

A wounded deer leaps highest,
I've heard the hunter tell;
‘Tis but the ecstasy of death,
And then the brake is still.

 

The smitten rock that gushes,
The trampled steel that springs:
A cheek is always redder
Just where the hectic stings!

 

Mirth is the mail of anguish,
In which it cautious arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And “You're hurt” exclaim!

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 chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

 

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

 

None may teach it anything,
'T is the seal, despair,—
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

 

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

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'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us—don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

 

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

He fumbles at your spirit

As players at the keys

Before they drop full music on;

He stuns you by degrees,

 

Prepares your brittle substance

For the ethereal blow,

By fainter hammers, further heard,

Then nearer, then so slow

 

Your breath has time to straighten,

Your brain to bubble cool,—

Deals one imperial thunderbolt

That scalps your naked soul.

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

 

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.

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

To hands I cannot see;

For love of her, sweet countrymen,

Judge tenderly of me!

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.

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 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 't is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

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.

I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.

 

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.

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!

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.

Tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied her raven ringlets in;
But not alone in the silken snare
Did she catch her lovely floating hair,
For, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man's heart within.

 

They were strolling together up the hill,
Where the wind comes blowing merry and chill;
And it blew the curls, a frolicsome race,
All over the happy peach-colored face,
Till, scolding and laughing, she tied them in,
Under her beautiful dimpled chin.

 

And it blew a color, bright as the bloom
Of the pinkest fuchsia's tossing plume,
All over the cheeks of the prettiest girl
That ever imprisoned a romping curl,
Or, tying her bonnet under her chin,
Tied a young man's heart within.

 

Steeper and steeper grew the hill;
Madder, merrier, chillier still
The western wind blew down, and played
The wildest tricks with the little maid,
As, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man's heart within.

 

O western wind, do you think it was fair
To play such tricks with her floating hair!
To gladly, gleefully do your best
To blow her against the young man's breast,
Where he as gladly folded her in,
And kissed her mouth and her dimpled chin?

 

Ah! Ellery Vane, you little thought,
An hour ago, when you besought
This country lass to walk with you,
After the sun had dried the dew,
What perilous danger you'd be in,
As she tied her bonnet under her chin!