How lonesome the Wind must feel Nights --
When people have put out the Lights
And everything that has an Inn
Closes the shutter and goes in --

How pompous the Wind must feel Noons
Stepping to incorporeal Tunes
Correcting errors of the sky
And clarifying scenery

How mighty the Wind must feel Morns
Encamping on a thousand dawns
Espousing each and spurning all
Then soaring to his Temple Tall --

It was a quiet seeming Day --
There was no harm in earth or sky --
Till with the closing sun
There strayed an accidental Red
A Strolling Hue, one would have said
To westward of the Town --

But when the Earth began to jar
And Houses vanished with a roar
And Human Nature hid
We comprehended by the Awe
As those that Dissolution saw
The Poppy in the Cloud

One Joy of so much anguish
Sweet nature has for me
I shun it as I do Despair
Or dear iniquity --
Why Birds, a Summer morning
Before the Quick of Day
Should stab my ravished spirit
With Dirks of Melody
Is part of an inquiry
That will receive reply
When Flesh and Spirit sunder
In Death's Immediately --

Such are the inlets of the mind --
His outlets -- would you see
Ascend with me the eminence
Of immortality --

Summer has two Beginnings --
Beginning once in June --
Beginning in October
Affectingly again --

Without, perhaps, the Riot
But graphicker for Grace --
As finer is a going
Than a remaining Face --

Departing then -- forever --
Forever -- until May --
Forever is deciduous
Except to those who die --

The fairest Home I ever knew
Was founded in an Hour
By Parties also that I knew
A spider and a Flower --
A manse of mechlin and of Floes --

The Gentian has a parched Corolla --
Like azure dried
'Tis Nature's buoyant juices
Beatified --
Without a vaunt or sheen
As casual as Rain
And as benign --

When most is part -- it comes --
Nor isolate it seems
Its Bond its Friend --
To fill its Fringed career
And aid an aged Year
Abundant end --

Its lot -- were it forgot --
This Truth endear --
Fidelity is gain
Creation is o'er --

The inundation of the Spring
Enlarges every soul --
It sweeps the tenement away
But leaves the Water whole --

In which the soul at first estranged --
Seeks faintly for its shore
But acclimated -- pines no more
For that Peninsula --

The pretty Rain from those sweet Eaves
Her unintending Eyes --
Took her own Heart, including ours,
By innocent Surprise --

The wrestle in her simple Throat
To hold the feeling down
That vanquished her -- defeated Feat --
Was Fervor's sudden Crown --

To earn it by disdaining it
Is Fame's consummate Fee --
He loves what spurns him --
Look behind -- He is pursuing thee.

So let us gather -- every Day --
The Aggregate of
Life's Bouquet
Be Honor and not shame --

Water makes many Beds
For those averse to sleep --
Its awful chamber open stands --
Its Curtains blandly sweep --
Abhorrent is the Rest
In undulating Rooms
Whose Amplitude no end invades --
Whose Axis never comes.

We shun because we prize her Face
Lest sight's ineffable disgrace
Our Adoration stain

Who never wanted -- maddest Joy
Remains to him unknown --
The Banquet of Abstemiousness
Defaces that of Wine --

Within its reach, though yet ungrasped
Desire's perfect Goal --
No nearer -- lest the Actual --
Should disentrall thy soul --

With Pinions of Disdain
The soul can farther fly
Than any feather specified
in Ornithology --
It wafts this sordid Flesh
Beyond its dull -- control
And during its electric gale --
The body is a soul --
instructing by the same --
How little work it be --
To put off filaments like this
for immortality

Spurn the temerity --
Rashness of Calvary --
Gay were Gethsemane
Knew we of Thee --

How brittle are the Piers
On which our Faith doth tread --
No Bridge below doth totter so --
Yet none hath such a Crowd.

It is as old as God --
Indeed -- 'twas built by him --
He sent his Son to test the Plank,
And he pronounced it firm.