Promise This -- When You be Dying --
Some shall summon Me --
Mine belong Your latest Sighing --
Mine -- to Belt Your Eye --

Not with Coins -- though they be Minted
From an Emperor's Hand --
Be my lips -- the only Buckle
Your low Eyes -- demand --

Mine to stay -- when all have wandered --
To devise once more
If the Life be too surrendered --
Life of Mine -- restore --

Poured like this -- My Whole Libation --
Just that You should see
Bliss of Death -- Life's Bliss extol thro'
Imitating You --

Mine -- to guard Your Narrow Precinct --
To seduce the Sun
Longest on Your South, to linger,
Largest Dews of Morn

To demand, in Your low favor
Lest the Jealous Grass
Greener lean -- Or fonder cluster
Round some other face --

Mine to supplicate Madonna --
If Madonna be
Could behold so far a Creature --
Christ -- omitted -- Me --

Just to follow Your dear future --
Ne'er so far behind --
For My Heaven --
Had I not been
Most enough -- denied?

Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead
Came the Darker Way --
Carriages -- Be Sure -- and Guests -- too --
But for Holiday

'Tis more pitiful Endeavor
Than did Loaded Sea
O'er the Curls attempt to caper
It had cast away --

Never Bride had such Assembling --
Never kinsmen kneeled
To salute so fair a Forehead --
Garland be indeed --

Fitter Feet -- of Her before us --
Than whatever Brow
Art of Snow -- or Trick of Lily
Possibly bestow

Of Her Father -- Whoso ask Her --
He shall seek as high
As the Palm -- that serve the Desert --
To obtain the Sky --

Distance -- be Her only Motion --
If 'tis Nay -- or Yes --
Acquiescence -- or Demurral --
Whosoever guess --

He -- must pass the Crystal Angle
That obscure Her face --
He -- must have achieved in person
Equal Paradise --

Pain -- has an Element of Blank --
It cannot recollect
When it begun -- or if there were
A time when it was not --

It has no Future -- but itself --
Its Infinite contain
Its Past -- enlightened to perceive
New Periods -- of Pain.

So much Summer
Me for showing
Illegitimate --
Would a Smile's minute bestowing
Too exorbitant

To the Lady
With the Guinea
Look -- if She should know
Crumb of Mine
A Robin's Larder
Would suffice to stow --

A Prison gets to be a friend --
Between its Ponderous face
And Ours -- a Kinsmanship express --
And in its narrow Eyes --

We come to look with gratitude
For the appointed Beam
It deal us -- stated as our food --
And hungered for -- the same --

We learn to know the Planks --
That answer to Our feet --
So miserable a sound -- at first --
Nor ever now -- so sweet --

As plashing in the Pools --
When Memory was a Boy --
But a Demurer Circuit --
A Geometric Joy --

The Posture of the Key
That interrupt the Day
To Our Endeavor -- Not so real
The Check of Liberty --

As this Phantasm Steel --
Whose features -- Day and Night --
Are present to us -- as Our Own --
And as escapeless -- quite --

The narrow Round -- the Stint --
The slow exchange of Hope --
For something passiver -- Content
Too steep for lookinp up --

The Liberty we knew
Avoided -- like a Dream --
Too wide for any Night but Heaven --
If That -- indeed -- redeem --

Of Being is a Bird
The likest to the Down
An Easy Breeze do put afloat
The General Heavens -- upon --

It soars -- and shifts -- and whirls --
And measures with the Clouds
In easy -- even -- dazzling pace --
No different the Birds --

Except a Wake of Music
Accompany their feet --
As did the Down emit a Tune --
For Ecstasy -- of it

A long -- long Sleep -- A famous -- Sleep --
That makes no show for Morn --
By Stretch of Limb -- or stir of Lid --
An independent One --

Was ever idleness like This?
Upon a Bank of Stone
To bask the Centuries away --
Nor once look up -- for Noon?

Without this -- there is nought --
All other Riches be
As is the Twitter of a Bird --
Heard opposite the Sea --

I could not care -- to gain
A lesser than the Whole --
For did not this include themself --
As Seams -- include the Ball?

I wished a way might be
My Heart to subdivide --
'Twould magnify -- the Gratitude --
And not reduce -- the Gold --