The vastest earthly Day
Is shrunken small
By one Defaulting Face
Behind a Pall --

Whether they have forgotten
Or are forgetting now
Or never remembered --
Safer not to know --

Miseries of conjecture
Are a softer woe
Than a Fact of Iron
Hardened with I know --

Without a smile -- Without a Throe
A Summer's soft Assemblies go
To their entrancing end
Unknown -- for all the times we met --
Estranged, however intimate --
What a dissembling Friend --

Wonder -- is not precisely Knowing
And not precisely Knowing not --
A beautiful but bleak condition
He has not lived who has not felt --

Suspense -- is his maturer Sister --
Whether Adult Delight is Pain
Or of itself a new misgiving --
This is the Gnat that mangles men --

Pink -- small -- and punctual --
Aromatic -- low --
Covert -- in April --
Candid -- in May --
Dear to the Moss --
Known to the Knoll --
Next to the Robin
In every human Soul --
Bold little Beauty
Bedecked with thee
Nature forswears
Antiquity --

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown --
Who ponders this tremendous scene --
This whole Experiment of Green --
As if it were his own!

How soft this Prison is
How sweet these sullen bars
No Despot but the King of Down
Invented this repose

Of Fate if this is All
Has he no added Realm
A Dungeon but a Kinsman is
Incarceration -- Home.

Let me not mar that perfect Dream
By an Auroral stain
But so adjust my daily Night
That it will come again.

Not when we know, the Power accosts --
The Garment of Surprise
Was all our timid Mother wore
At Home -- in Paradise.

Nature assigns the Sun --
That -- is Astronomy --
Nature cannot enact a Friend --
That -- is Astrology.

Upon a Lilac Sea
To toss incessantly
His Plush Alarm
Who fleeing from the Spring
The Spring avenging fling
To Dooms of Balm

What tenements of clover
Are fitting for the bee,
What edifices azure
For butterflies and me --
What residences nimble
Arise and evanesce
Without a rhythmic rumor
Or an assaulting guess.

A Bee his burnished Carriage
Drove boldly to a Rose --
Combinedly alighting --
Himself -- his Carriage was --
The Rose received his visit
With frank tranquillity
Withholding not a Crescent
To his Cupidity --
Their Moment consummated --
Remained for him -- to flee --
Remained for her -- of rapture
But the humility.

A Rat surrendered here
A brief career of Cheer
And Fraud and Fear.

Of Ignominy's due
Let all addicted to
Beware.

The most obliging Trap
Its tendency to snap
Cannot resist --

Temptation is the Friend
Repugnantly resigned
At last.

Unto the Whole -- how add?
Has "All" a further realm --
Or Utmost an Ulterior?
Oh, Subsidy of Balm!

"Was not" was all the Statement.
The Unpretension stuns --
Perhaps -- the Comprehension --
They wore no Lexicons --

But lest our Speculation
In inanition die
Because "God took him" mention --
That was Philology --

A single Clover Plank
Was all that saved a Bee
A Bee I personally knew
From sinking in the sky --

'Twixt Firmament above
And Firmament below
The Billows of Circumference
Were sweeping him away --

The idly swaying Plank
Responsible to nought
A sudden Freight of Wind assumed
And Bumble Bee was not --

This harrowing event
Transpiring in the Grass
Did not so much as wring from him
A wandering "Alas" --