And if I do, when morning comes, It is as if a hundred drums Did round my pillow roll, And shouts fill all my childish sky, And bells keep saying 'victory' From steeples in my soul!
And if I don't, the little Bird Within the Orchard is not heard, And I omit to pray, 'Father, thy will be done' to-day, For my will goes the other way, And it were perjury!
It dropped so low in my regard I heard it hit the ground, And go to pieces on the stones At bottom of my mind;
Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less Than I reviled myself For entertaining plated wares Upon my silver shelf.
To lose one's faith surpasses The loss of an estate, Because estates can be Replenished, -- faith cannot.
Inherited with life, Belief but once can be; Annihilate a single clause, And Being's beggary.
I had a daily bliss I half indifferent viewed, Till sudden I perceived it stir, -- It grew as I pursued,
Till when, around a crag, It wasted from my sight, Enlarged beyond my utmost scope, I learned its sweetness right.
I worked for chaff, and earning wheat Was haughty and betrayed. What right had fields to arbitrate In matters ratified?
I tasted wheat, -- and hated chaff, And thanked the ample friend; Wisdom is more becoming viewed At distance than at hand.
Life, and Death, and Giants Such as these, are still. Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill, Beetle at the candle, Or a fife's small fame, Maintain by accident That they proclaim.
Our lives are Swiss, -- So still, so cool, Till, some odd afternoon, The Alps neglect their curtains, And we look farther on.
Italy stands the other side, While, like a guard between, The solemn Alps, The siren Alps, Forever intervene!
Remembrance has a rear and front, -- 'T is something like a house; It has a garret also For refuse and the mouse,
Besides, the deepest cellar That ever mason hewed; Look to it, by its fathoms Ourselves be not pursued.
To hang our head ostensibly, And subsequent to find That such was not the posture Of our immortal mind,
Affords the sly presumption That, in so dense a fuzz, You, too, take cobweb attitudes Upon a plane of gauze!
The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will include With ease, and you beside.
The brain is deeper than the sea, For, hold them, blue to blue, The one the other will absorb, As sponges, buckets do.