Speaking In Tongues





* * *

This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me, --
The simple news that nature told,
With tender magesty.


Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

* * *


. --
.
--
.


--
-- --
!





* * *

Altrer? When the hills do.
Falter? When the sun
Question if his glory
Be the perfect one.


Surfeit? When the daffodil
Doth of the dew:
Even as herself, O friend!
I will of you!





* * *

-- !
!
-
--


!
--
-- --





* * *

We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.


The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.





* * *

-- --
.
-- --
.


-- --
-- --
-- --





* * *

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,


So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.





* * *

, ;
--


--
:
--
?





* * *

The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.


Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.


I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.





* * *

--
--
.


--
--
,
--


.
--
--
.





* * *

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.


He questioned softly why I failed?
For beauty, I replied.
And I for truth, -- the two are one;
We brethren are, he said.


And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.





* * *

.
--
.


? -- . --
.
...


-- ,
, ,
.





* * *

To venerate the simple days
Which lead the seasons by,
Needs but to remember
That from you or me
They may take the trifle
Termed mortality!


To invent existence with a stately air,
Needs but to remember
That the acorn there
Is the egg of forests,
For the upper air!





* * *

,
:
, ,
.


,
:
,
!





* * *

--
,
--


, --
, --


, ...
--
-- --
--


-- ...
-- --
-- -- -- --
! -- -- ...





* * *

--
--
.


--
,
--


--
-- --
--


--
--
, ,
-- --





* * *

--
--
,
--


,
?
-- ,
--


--
--
--


--
--
--
.





* * *

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.


A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.





* * *

,
--
, ...
?


,
, ...
-- --
.





* * *

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!





* * *

--
--
-- --





* * *

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.


The revery alone will do
If bees are few





* * *

,
--
,
.


,
, .