LITMIR.BIZ

      Soul, wilt thou toss again?

      By just such a hazard

      Hundreds have lost, indeed,

      But tens have won an all.

      Angels' breathless ballot

      Lingers to record thee;

      Imps in eager caucus

      Raffle for my soul.

      'T is so much joy! 'T is so much joy!

      If I should fail, what poverty!

      And yet, as poor as I

      Have ventured all upon a throw;

      Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so

      This side the victory!

      Life is but life, and death but death!

      Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!

      And if, indeed, I fail,

      At least to know the worst is sweet.

      Defeat means nothing but defeat,

      No drearier can prevail!

      And if I gain, – oh, gun at sea,

      Oh, bells that in the steeples be,

      At first repeat it slow!

      For heaven is a different thing

      Conjectured, and waked sudden in,

      And might o'erwhelm me so!

      Glee! The great storm is over!

      Four have recovered the land;

      Forty gone down together

      Into the boiling sand.

      Ring, for the scant salvation!

      Toll, for the bonnie souls, —

      Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,

      Spinning upon the shoals!

      How they will tell the shipwreck

      When winter shakes the door,

      Till the children ask, "But the forty?

      Did they come back no more?"

      Then a silence suffuses the story,

      And a softness the teller's eye;

      And the children no further question,

      And only the waves reply.

      If I can stop one heart from breaking,

      I shall not live in vain;

      If I can ease one life the aching,

      Or cool one pain,

      Or help one fainting robin

      Unto his nest again,

      I shall not live in vain.

      Within my reach!

      I could have touched!

      I might have chanced that way!

      Soft sauntered through the village,

      Sauntered as soft away!

      So unsuspected violets

      Within the fields lie low,

      Too late for striving fingers

      That passed, an hour ago.

      A wounded deer leaps highest,

      I've heard the hunter tell;

      'T is but the ecstasy of death,

      And then the brake is still.

      The smitten rock that gushes,

      The trampled steel that springs;

      A cheek is always redder

      Just where the hectic stings!

      Mirth is the mail of anguish,

      In which it cautions arm,

      Lest anybody spy the blood

      And "You're hurt" exclaim!

      The heart asks pleasure first,

      And then, excuse from pain;

      And then, those little anodynes

      That deaden suffering;

      And then, to go to sleep;

      And then, if it should be

      The will of its Inquisitor,

      The liberty to die.

      A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is

      To meet an antique book,

      In just the dress his century wore;

      A privilege, I think,

      His venerable hand to take,

      And warming in our own,

      A passage back, or two, to make

      To times when he was young.

      His quaint opinions to inspect,

      His knowledge to unfold

      On what concerns our mutual mind,

      The literature of old;

      What interested scholars most,

      What competitions ran

      When Plato was a certainty.

      And Sophocles a man;

      When Sappho was a living girl,

      And Beatrice wore

      The gown that Dante deified.

      Facts, centuries before,

      He traverses familiar,

      As one should come to town

      And tell you all your dreams were true;

      He lived where dreams were sown.

      His presence is enchantment,

      You beg him not to go;

      Old volumes shake their vellum heads

      And tantalize, just so.

      Much madness is divinest sense

      To a discerning eye;

      Much sense the starkest madness.

      'T is the majority

      In this, as all, prevails.

      Assent, and you are sane;

      Demur, – you're straightway dangerous,

      And handled with a chain.

      I asked no other thing,

      No other was denied.

      I offered Being for it;

      The mighty merchant smiled.

      Brazil?

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