ON PLUCKING A CROCUS.
Sweet Crocus! harbinger of spring,
Awake, with others sleeping,
How have I wrecked thy new-born life
And set thy parent weeping!
See! sad her weeping eyes upturning,
Adrip with love for thee,
And arms outstretched implore thy slayer
That thou’lt returnéd be.
Alas! in vain her tears must flow,
Her palms implore the youth
Who pluckéd thee from out her heart
And set in his such ruth.
I cannot give thee back—I would
I might! I’d send thee thither;
It grieveth me to see her weep,
To know that thou shalt wither.
My heart ne’er tho’t when thee I plucked,
For thou not yet hadst won it,
How much I took, how little gave—
I would I had not done it.
Lift up thy drooping head again—
I would the word would do it!—
Make me not weep for plucking thee;
Thou know’st how much I rue it.
Thy pure and purple-tinted petals,
Thy olden-golden anthered stamens
Thy saffron pistil-tips!—
Would I could here embalm them all
And wrap in verses meet
So that thou’dst be, when years should roll,
To others just as sweet!
Envoy.
’Tis thus, O soul-inspired poet,
The world shall greet thy song—
Shall pluck it from thy throbbing soul
To die amidst the throng.
And thus, O plucker of the crocus,
Shall Death come unto thee—
Shall pluck thee from thy mother’s heart,
Shall thy embalmer be.
So may’st thou live and do and be
That Death, with riches rife,
Shall be thy welcome harbinger,—
The crocus of thy life.
GRAVITY—LIFE!
(After Browning—several miles after.)
Gravity—what?
Attraction we call it,
Yet mind cannot thrall it—
Where is it not?
Life of world-stuff—truly it is!
—Life then of man?—His, and not his!
’Tis of all matter; thus ’tis of man;
’Tis of all space, and spans the world’s span.
Matter, man! Gravity, life!
—Each fits to each; with the other at strife.
Life? It is—what?
Who can explain it?
Mind cannot chain it—
God! how ’tis wrought!