LITMIR.BIZ

      I felt a clearing in my mind

        As if my brain had split;

      I tried to match it, seam by seam,

        But could not make them fit.

      The thought behind I strove to join

        Unto the thought before,

      But sequence ravelled out of reach

        Like balls upon a floor.

      The reticent volcano keeps

        His never slumbering plan;

      Confided are his projects pink

        To no precarious man.

      If nature will not tell the tale

        Jehovah told to her,

      Can human nature not survive

        Without a listener?

      Admonished by her buckled lips

        Let every babbler be.

      The only secret people keep

        Is Immortality.

      If recollecting were forgetting,

        Then I remember not;

      And if forgetting, recollecting,

        How near I had forgot!

      And if to miss were merry,

        And if to mourn were gay,

      How very blithe the fingers

        That gathered these to-day!

      The farthest thunder that I heard

        Was nearer than the sky,

      And rumbles still, though torrid noons

        Have lain their missiles by.

      The lightning that preceded it

        Struck no one but myself,

      But I would not exchange the bolt

        For all the rest of life.

      Indebtedness to oxygen

        The chemist may repay,

      But not the obligation

        To electricity.

      It founds the homes and decks the days,

        And every clamor bright

      Is but the gleam concomitant

        Of that waylaying light.

      The thought is quiet as a flake, —

        A crash without a sound;

      How life's reverberation

        Its explanation found!

      On the bleakness of my lot

        Bloom I strove to raise.

      Late, my acre of a rock

        Yielded grape and maize.

      Soil of flint if steadfast tilled

        Will reward the hand;

      Seed of palm by Lybian sun

        Fructified in sand.

      A door just opened on a street —

        I, lost, was passing by —

      An instant's width of warmth disclosed,

        And wealth, and company.

      The door as sudden shut, and I,

        I, lost, was passing by, —

      Lost doubly, but by contrast most,

        Enlightening misery.

      Are friends delight or pain?

        Could bounty but remain

      Riches were good.

      But if they only stay

      Bolder to fly away,

        Riches are sad.

      Ashes denote that fire was;

        Respect the grayest pile

      For the departed creature's sake

        That hovered there awhile.

      Fire exists the first in light,

        And then consolidates, —

      Only the chemist can disclose

        Into what carbonates.

      Fate slew him, but he did not drop;

        She felled – he did not fall —

      Impaled him on her fiercest stakes —

        He neutralized them all.

      She stung him, sapped his firm advance,

        But, when her worst was done,

      And he, unmoved, regarded her,

        Acknowledged him a man.

      Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

        For the one ship that struts the shore

      Many's the gallant, overwhelmed creature

        Nodding in navies nevermore.

      I measure every grief I meet

        With analytic eyes;

      I wonder if it weighs like mine,

        Or has an easier size.

      I wonder if they bore it long,

        Or did it just begin?

      I could not tell the date of mine,

        It feels so old a pain.

      I wonder if it hurts to live,

        And if they have to try,

      And whether, could they choose between,

        They would not rather die.

      I wonder if when years have piled —

        Some thousands – on the cause

      Of early hurt, if such a lapse

        Could give them any pause;

      Or would they go on aching still

        Through centuries above,

      Enlightened to a larger pain

        By

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