What honey in the year's last flowers can hide,
These little yellow butterflies may know:
With falling leaves they waver to and fro,
Or on the swinging tops of asters ride.
But I am weary of the summer's pride
And sick September's simulated show:
Why do the colder winds delay to blow
And bring the pleasant hours that we abide;
To curtained alcove and sweet household talks,
Or sweeter silence by our flickering Lars,
Returning late from autumn evening walks
Upon the frosty hills, while reddening Mars
Hangs low between the withered mullein stalks,
And upward throngs the host of winter stars?
[Greek: Tò Pan]
The little creek which yesterday I saw
Ooze through the sedges, and each brackish vein
That sluiced the marsh, now filled and then again
Sucked dry to glut the sea's unsated maw,
All ebb and flow by the same rhythmic law
That times the beat of the Atlantic main—
They also fastened to the swift moon's train
By unseen cords that no less strongly draw.
So, poet, may thy life's small tributary
Threading some bitter marsh, obscure, alone,
Feel yet one pulse with the broad estuary
That bears an emperor's fleets through half a zone:
May wait upon the same high luminary
And pitch its voice to the same ocean's tone.
THE SINGER OF ONE SONG
He sang one song and died—no more but that:
A single song and carelessly complete.
He would not bind and thresh his chance-grown wheat,
Nor bring his wild fruit to the common vat,
To store the acid rinsings, thin and flat,
Squeezed from the press or trodden under feet.
A few slow beads, blood-red and honey sweet,
Oozed from the grape, which burst and spilled its fat.
But Time, who soonest drops the heaviest things
That weight his pack, will carry diamonds long.
So through the poet's orchestra, which weaves
One music from a thousand stops and strings,
Pierces the note of that immortal song:—
"High over all the lonely bugle grieves."
POSTHUMOUS
Put them in print?
Make one more dint
In the ages' furrowed rock? No, no!
Let his name and his verses go.
These idle scraps, they would but wrong
His memory, whom we honored long;
And men would ask: "Is this the best—
Is this the whole his life expressed?"
Haply he had no care to tell
To all the thoughts which flung their spell
Around us when the night grew deep,
Making it seem a loss to sleep,
Exalting the low, dingy room
To some high auditorium.
And when we parted homeward, still
They followed us beyond the hill.
The heaven had brought new stars to sight,
Opening the map of later night;
And the wide silence of the snow,
And the dark whispers of the pines,
And those keen fires that glittered slow
Along the zodiac's wintry signs,
Seemed witnesses and near of kin
To the high dreams we held within.