The Road was lit with Moon and star --
The Trees were bright and still --
Descried I -- by the distant Light
A Traveller on a Hill --
To magic Perpendiculars
Ascending, though Terrene --
Unknown his shimmering ultimate --
But he indorsed the sheen --

Whoever disenchants
A single Human soul
By failure of irreverence
Is guilty of the whole.

As guileless as a Bird
As graphic as a star
Till the suggestion sinister
Things are not what they are --

Your thoughts don't have words every day
They come a single time
Like signal esoteric sips
Of the communion Wine
Which while you taste so native seems
So easy so to be
You cannot comprehend its price
Nor its infrequency

A Counterfeit -- a Plated Person --
I would not be --
Whatever strata of Iniquity
My Nature underlie --
Truth is good Health -- and Safety, and the Sky.
How meagre, what an Exile -- is a Lie,
And Vocal -- when we die --

Those not live yet
Who doubt to live again --
"Again" is of a twice
But this -- is one --
The Ship beneath the Draw
Aground -- is he?
Death -- so -- the Hyphen of the Sea --
Deep is the Schedule
Of the Disk to be --
Costumeless Consciousness --
That is he --

Opinion is a flitting thing,
But Truth, outlasts the Sun --
If then we cannot own them both --
Possess the oldest one --

So gay a Flower
Bereaves the Mind
As if it were a Woe --
Is Beauty an Affliction -- then?
Tradition ought to know --

It stole along so stealthy
Suspicion it was done
Was dim as to the wealthy
Beginning not to own --

Time's wily Chargers will not wait
At any Gate but Woe's --
But there -- so gloat to hesitate
They will not stir for blows --

Belshazzar had a Letter --
He never had but one --
Belshazzar's Correspondent
Concluded and begun
In that immortal Copy
The Conscience of us all
Can read without its Glasses
On Revelation's Wall --

His Cheek is his Biographer --
As long as he can blush
Perdition is Opprobrium --
Past that, he sins in peace --

"Heavenly Father" -- take to thee
The supreme iniquity
Fashioned by thy candid Hand
In a moment contraband --
Though to trust us -- seems to us
More respectful -- "We are Dust" --
We apologize to thee
For thine own Duplicity --

We knew not that we were to live --
Nor when -- we are to die --
Our ignorance -- our cuirass is --
We wear Mortality
As lightly as an Option Gown
Till asked to take it off --
By his intrusion, God is known --
It is the same with Life --

A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel --
A Resonance of Emerald --
A Rush of Cochineal --
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts its tumbled Head --
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy Morning's Ride --

One thing of it we borrow
And promise to return --
The Booty and the Sorrow
Its Sweetness to have known --
One thing of it we covet --
The power to forget --
The Anguish of the Avarice
Defrays the Dross of it --

Before you thought of Spring
Except as a Surmise
You see -- God bless his suddenness --
A Fellow in the Skies
Of independent Hues
A little weather worn
Inspiriting habiliments
Of Indigo and Brown --
With specimens of Song
As if for you to choose --
Discretion in the interval
With gay delays he goes
To some superior Tree
Without a single Leaf
And shouts for joy to Nobody
But his seraphic self --