Short Poems

I leave the book, I leave the wine,
I breathe freer by the pine:
In houses, I am low & mean,
Mountain waters wash me clean,
And by the seawaves I am strong,
I hear their medicinal song,
No balsam but the breeze I crave,
And no physician but the wave.

The coral worm beneath the sea
Mason planter spreads
Its rock vegetable threads
Foundation of the isles to be
His colossal flowers
Home of imperial powers
And nobler life

She had wealth of mornings in her year
And planets in her sky,
She chose the best thy heart to cheer
Thy beauty to supply.—
Now younger lovers find the stream
The willow & the vine
But aye to me the happiest seem
To draw the dregs of wine

The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.

How still the bells in steeples stand,
Till, swollen with the sky,
They leap upon their silver feet
In frantic melody!

To help our bleaker parts
Salubrious hours are given,
Which if they do not fit for earth
Drill silently for heaven.

The fascinating chill that music leaves
Is Earth's corroboration
Of Ecstasy's impediment—
'Tis Rapture's germination
In timid and tumultuous soil
A fine—estranging creature—
To something upper wooing us
But not to our Creator—

Sweet hours have perished here;
This is a mighty room;
Within its precincts hopes have played,—
Now shadows in the tomb.

If What we could—were what we would—
Criterion—be small—
It is the Ultimate of Talk—
The Impotence to Tell—

No grief is grown so desperate, but the ill
Is halfe way cured, if the party will.