Drawn by horses with decorous feet,
A carriage for one went through the street,
Polished as anthracite out of the mine,
Tossing its plumes so stately and fine,
As nods to the night a Norway pine.
The passenger lay in Parian rest,
As if, by the sculptor's hand caressed,
A mortal life through the marble stole,
And then till an angel calls the roll
It waits awhile for a human soul.
He rode in state, but his carriage-fare
Was left unpaid to his only heir;
Hardly a man, from hovel to throne,
Takes to this route in coach of his own,
But borrows at last and travels alone.
The driver sat in his silent seat;
The world, as still as a field of wheat,
Gave all the road to the speechless twain,
And thought the passenger never again
Should travel that way with living men.
Not a robin held its little breath,
But sang right on in the face of death;
You never would dream, to see the sky
Give glance for glance to the violet's eye,
That aught between them could ever die.
A wain bound east met the hearse bound west,
Halted a moment, and passed abreast;
And I verily think a stranger pair
Have never met on a thoroughfare,
Or a dim by-road, or anywhere:
The hearse as slim and glossy and still
As silken thread at a woman's will,
Who watches her work with tears unshed,
Broiders a grief with needle and thread,
Mourns in pansies and cypress the dead;
Spotless the steeds in a satin dress,
That run for two worlds the Lord's Express,—
Long as the route of Arcturus's ray,
Brief as the Publican's trying to pray,
No other steeds by no other way
Could go so far in a single day.
From wagon broad and heavy and rude
A group looking out from a single hood;
Striped with the flirt of a heedless lash,
Dappled and dimmed with many a splash,
"Gathered" behind like an old calash.
It made you think of a schooner's sail
Mildewed with weather, tattered by gale,
Down "by the run" from mizzen and main,—
That canvas mapped with stipple and stain
Of Western earth and the prairie rain.