LITMIR.BIZ

      I have a king who does not speak;

      So, wondering, thro' the hours meek

        I trudge the day away,—

      Half glad when it is night and sleep,

      If, haply, thro' a dream to peep

        In parlors shut by day.

      And if I do, when morning comes,

      It is as if a hundred drums

        Did round my pillow roll,

      And shouts fill all my childish sky,

      And bells keep saying 'victory'

        From steeples in my soul!

      And if I don't, the little Bird

      Within the Orchard is not heard,

        And I omit to pray,

      'Father, thy will be done' to-day,

      For my will goes the other way,

        And it were perjury!

      It dropped so low in my regard

        I heard it hit the ground,

      And go to pieces on the stones

        At bottom of my mind;

      Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less

        Than I reviled myself

      For entertaining plated wares

        Upon my silver shelf.

      To lose one's faith surpasses

        The loss of an estate,

      Because estates can be

        Replenished, – faith cannot.

      Inherited with life,

        Belief but once can be;

      Annihilate a single clause,

        And Being's beggary.

      I had a daily bliss

        I half indifferent viewed,

      Till sudden I perceived it stir, —

        It grew as I pursued,

      Till when, around a crag,

        It wasted from my sight,

      Enlarged beyond my utmost scope,

        I learned its sweetness right.

      I worked for chaff, and earning wheat

        Was haughty and betrayed.

      What right had fields to arbitrate

        In matters ratified?

      I tasted wheat, – and hated chaff,

        And thanked the ample friend;

      Wisdom is more becoming viewed

        At distance than at hand.

      Life, and Death, and Giants

        Such as these, are still.

      Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill,

      Beetle at the candle,

        Or a fife's small fame,

      Maintain by accident

        That they proclaim.

      Our lives are Swiss, —

        So still, so cool,

        Till, some odd afternoon,

      The Alps neglect their curtains,

        And we look farther on.

      Italy stands the other side,

        While, like a guard between,

      The solemn Alps,

      The siren Alps,

        Forever intervene!

      Remembrance has a rear and front, —

        'T is something like a house;

      It has a garret also

        For refuse and the mouse,

      Besides, the deepest cellar

        That ever mason hewed;

      Look to it, by its fathoms

        Ourselves be not pursued.

      To hang our head ostensibly,

        And subsequent to find

      That such was not the posture

        Of our immortal mind,

      Affords the sly presumption

        That, in so dense a fuzz,

      You, too, take cobweb attitudes

        Upon a plane of gauze!

      The brain is wider than the sky,

        For, put them side by side,

      The one the other will include

        With ease, and you beside.

      The brain is deeper than the sea,

        For, hold them, blue to blue,

      The one the other will absorb,

        As sponges, buckets do.

      The brain is just the weight of God,

        For, lift them, pound for pound,