All but Death, can be Adjusted -

Dynasties repaired -

Systems - settled in their Sockets -

Citadels - dissolved -

Wastes of Lives - resown with Colors

By Succeeding Springs -

Death - unto itself - Exception -

Is exempt from Change -

DEATH is a dialogue between

The spirit and the dust

"Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,

I have another trust."

Death doubts it, argues from the ground.

The Spirit turns away,

Just laying off, for evidence,

An overcoat of clay.

Death is the supple Suitor

That wins at last -

It is a stealthy Wooing

Conducted first

By pallid innuendoes

And dim approach

But brave at last with Bugles

And a bisected Coach

It bears away in triumph

To Troth unknown

And Kindred as responsive

As Porcelain.

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.

Drab habitation of whom?

Tabernacle or tomb,

Or dome of worm,

Or porch of gnome,

Or some elf's catacomb?

Each life converges to some centre

Expressed or still;

Exists in every human nature

A goal,

Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be,

Too fair

For credibility's temerity

To dare.

Adored with caution, as a brittle heaven,

To reach

Were hopeless as the rainbow's raiment

To touch,

Yet persevered toward, surer for the distance;

How high

Unto the saints' slow diligence

The sky!

Ungained, it may be, by a life's low venture,

But then,

Eternity enables the endeavoring

Again.

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!

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.

Her sweet weight on my Heart a Night

Had scarcely deigned to lie -

When, stirring, for Beliefs delight,

My bride had slipped away -

If `twas a Dream - made solid - just

The Heaven to confirm -

Or if Myself were dreamed of Her -

The power to presume -

With Him remain - who unto Me -

Gave - even as to All -

A Fiction superseding Faith -

By so much - as `twas real -

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.

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,

One need not be a house;

The brain has corridors surpassing

Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting

External ghost,

Than an interior confronting

That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,

The stones achase,

Than, moonless, one's own self encounter

In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,

Should startle most;

Assassin, hid in our apartment,

Be horror's least.

The prudent carries a revolver,

He bolts the door,

O'erlooking a superior spectre

More near.

There is a morn by men unseen -

Whose maids upon remoter green

Keep their Seraphic May -

And all day long, with dance and game,

And gambol I may never name -

Employ their holiday.

Here to light measure, move the feet

Which walk no more the village street -

Nor by the wood are found -

Here are the birds that sought the sun

When last year's distaff idle hung

And summer's brows were bound.

Ne'er saw I such a wondrous scene -

Ne'er such a ring on such a green -

Nor so serene array -

As if the stars some summer night

Should swing their cups of Chrysolite -

And revel till the day -

Like thee to dance - like thee to sing -

People upon the mystic green -

I ask, each new May Morn.

I wait the far, fantastic bells -

Announcing me in other dells -

Unto the different dawn!

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.

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.

Unable are the Loved to die

For Love is Immortality,

Nay, it is Deity -

Unable they that love - to die

For Love reforms Vitality

Into Divinity.

What soft, cherubic creatures

These gentlewomen are!

One would as soon assault a plush

Or violate a star.

Such dimity convictions,

A horror so refined

Of freckled human nature,

Of Deity ashamed,--

It 's such a common glory,

A fisherman's degree!

Redemption, brittle lady,

Be so, ashamed of thee.