Gossip
The leaves, like women, interchange
Sacacious confidence;
Somewhat of nods, and somewhat of
Portentous inference,
The parties in both cases
Enjoining secrecy,--
Inviolable compact
To notoriety.
ESCAPE
I NEVER heard the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude.
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars,--
Only to fail again!
THE CHARIOT
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of grazing grain,
We passed the settling sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible.
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 't is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
UNTITLED
I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth--the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.
And so, as kinsmen met at night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
IN A LIBRARY
A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privelege, I think,
His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.
His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;
What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty,
And Sophocles a man;
Wen Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Fact, centuries before,
He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true:
He lived where dreams were sown.
His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.