LITMIR.BIZ

      It was too late for man,

      But early yet for God;

      Creation impotent to help,

      But prayer remained our side.

      How excellent the heaven,

      When earth cannot be had;

      How hospitable, then, the face

      Of our old neighbor, God!

      When I was small, a woman died.

      To-day her only boy

      Went up from the Potomac,

      His face all victory,

      To look at her; how slowly

      The seasons must have turned

      Till bullets clipt an angle,

      And he passed quickly round!

      If pride shall be in Paradise

      I never can decide;

      Of their imperial conduct,

      No person testified.

      But proud in apparition,

      That woman and her boy

      Pass back and forth before my brain,

      As ever in the sky.

      The daisy follows soft the sun,

      And when his golden walk is done,

          Sits shyly at his feet.

      He, waking, finds the flower near.

      "Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"

          "Because, sir, love is sweet!"

      We are the flower, Thou the sun!

      Forgive us, if as days decline,

          We nearer steal to Thee, —

      Enamoured of the parting west,

      The peace, the flight, the amethyst,

          Night's possibility!

      No rack can torture me,

      My soul's at liberty

      Behind this mortal bone

      There knits a bolder one

      You cannot prick with saw,

      Nor rend with scymitar.

      Two bodies therefore be;

      Bind one, and one will flee.

      The eagle of his nest

      No easier divest

      And gain the sky,

      Than mayest thou,

      Except thyself may be

      Thine enemy;

      Captivity is consciousness,

      So's liberty.

      I lost a world the other day.

      Has anybody found?

      You'll know it by the row of stars

      Around its forehead bound.

      A rich man might not notice it;

      Yet to my frugal eye

      Of more esteem than ducats.

      Oh, find it, sir, for me!

      If I shouldn't be alive

      When the robins come,

      Give the one in red cravat

      A memorial crumb.

      If I couldn't thank you,

      Being just asleep,

      You will know I'm trying

      With my granite lip!

      Sleep is supposed to be,

      By souls of sanity,

      The shutting of the eye.

      Sleep is the station grand

      Down which on either hand

      The hosts of witness stand!

      Morn is supposed to be,

      By people of degree,

      The breaking of the day.

      Morning has not occurred!

      That shall aurora be

      East of eternity;

      One with the banner gay,

      One in the red array, —

      That is the break of day.

      I shall know why, when time is over,

      And I have ceased to wonder why;

      Christ will explain each separate anguish

      In the fair schoolroom of the sky.

      He will tell me what Peter promised,

      And I, for wonder at his woe,

      I shall forget the drop of anguish

      That scalds me now, that scalds me now.

      I never lost as much but twice,

      And that was in the sod;

      Twice have I stood a beggar

      Before the door of God!

      Angels, twice descending,

      Reimbursed my store.