Part One: Life

Epigram

   
THIS is my letter to the world,      
  That never wrote to me,—      
The simple news that Nature told,      
  With tender majesty.      
     
Her message is committed           5   
  To hands I cannot see;      
For love of her, sweet countrymen,      
  Judge tenderly of me!

I

   
SUCCESS is counted sweetest      
By those who ne’er succeed.      
To comprehend a nectar      
Requires sorest need.      
     
Not one of all the purple host           5   
Who took the flag to-day      
Can tell the definition,      
So clear, of victory,      
     
As he, defeated, dying,      
On whose forbidden ear           10   
The distant strains of triumph      
Break, agonized and clear.

II

   
OUR share of night to bear,      
Our share of morning,      
Our blank in bliss to fill,      
Our blank in scorning.      
     
Here a star, and there a star,           5   
Some lose their way.      
Here a mist, and there a mist,      
Afterwards—day!

III

   
SOUL, wilt thou toss again?      
By just such a hazard      
Hundreds have lost, indeed,      
But tens have won an all.      
     
Angels’ breathless ballot           5   
Lingers to record thee;      
Imps in eager caucus      
Raffle for my soul.

IV

   
’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           5   
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.           10   
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!           15   
For heaven is a different thing      
Conjectured, and waked sudden in,      
And might o’erwhelm me so!

V

   
GLEE! the great storm is over!      
Four have recovered the land;      
Forty gone down together      
Into the boiling sand.      
     
Ring, for the scant salvation!           5   
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,           10   
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,           15   
And only the waves reply.

VI

   
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           5   
Unto his nest again,      
I shall not live in vain.

VII

   
WITHIN my reach!      
I could have touched!      
I might have chanced that way!      
Soft sauntered through the village,      
Sauntered as soft away!           5   
So unsuspected violets      
Within the fields lie low,      
Too late for striving fingers      
That passed, an hour ago.

VIII

   
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,           5   
The trampled steel that springs:      
A cheek is always redder      
Just where the hectic stings!      
     
Mirth is the mail of anguish,      
In which it caution arm,           10   
Lest anybody spy the blood      
And “You ’re hurt” exclaim!

IX

   
THE HEART asks pleasure first,      
And then, excuse from pain;      
And then, those little anodynes      
That deaden suffering;      
     
And then, to go to sleep;           5   
And then, if it should be      
The will of its Inquisitor,      
The liberty to die.