I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch, —
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experience.

LIV.

One day is there of the series
Termed Thanksgiving day,
Celebrated part at table,
Part in memory.

Neither patriarch nor pussy,
I dissect the play;
Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
Reflex holiday.

Had there been no sharp subtraction
From the early sum,
Not an acre or a caption
Where was once a room,

Not a mention, whose small pebble
Wrinkled any bay, —
Unto such, were such assembly,
'T were Thanksgiving day.

LV.

Softened by Time's consummate plush,
How sleek the woe appears
That threatened childhood's citadel
And undermined the years!