And then the milliner, and the man Of the appalling trade, To take the measure of the house. There'll be that dark parade
Of tassels and of coaches soon; It's easy as a sign, -- The intuition of the news In just a country town.
We never know we go, -- when we are going We jest and shut the door; Fate following behind us bolts it, And we accost no more.
It struck me every day The lightning was as new As if the cloud that instant slit And let the fire through.
It burned me in the night, It blistered in my dream; It sickened fresh upon my sight With every morning's beam.
I thought that storm was brief, -- The maddest, quickest by; But Nature lost the date of this, And left it in the sky.
Water is taught by thirst; Land, by the oceans passed; Transport, by throe; Peace, by its battles told; Love, by memorial mould; Birds, by the snow.
We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act; And later, when we die, A little water supplicate Of fingers going by.
It intimates the finer want, Whose adequate supply Is that great water in the west Termed immortality.
A clock stopped -- not the mantel's; Geneva's farthest skill Can't put the puppet bowing That just now dangled still.
An awe came on the trinket! The figures hunched with pain, Then quivered out of decimals Into degreeless noon.
It will not stir for doctors, This pendulum of snow; The shopman importunes it, While cool, concernless No
Nods from the gilded pointers, Nods from the seconds slim, Decades of arrogance between The dial life and him.
All overgrown by cunning moss, All interspersed with weed, The little cage of 'Currer Bell,' In quiet Haworth laid.
This bird, observing others, When frosts too sharp became, Retire to other latitudes, Quietly did the same,
But differed in returning; Since Yorkshire hills are green, Yet not in all the nests I meet Can nightingale be seen.
Gathered from many wanderings, Gethsemane can tell Through what transporting anguish She reached the asphodel!
Soft fall the sounds of Eden Upon her puzzled ear; Oh, what an afternoon for heaven, When 'Brontë' entered there!
A toad can die of light! Death is the common right Of toads and men, -- Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat's supremacy Is large as thine.