Part 37

As if it tarried always; And yet its whole career Is shorter than a snake's delay, And fleeter than a tare.

'T is vegetation's juggler, The germ of alibi; Doth like a bubble antedate, And like a bubble hie.

I feel as if the grass were pleased To have it intermit; The surreptitious scion Of summer's circumspect.

Had nature any outcast face, Could she a son contemn, Had nature an Iscariot, That mushroom, -- it is him.

XXVI.

THE STORM.

There came a wind like a bugle; It quivered through the grass, And a green chill upon the heat So ominous did pass We barred the windows and the doors As from an emerald ghost; The doom's electric moccason That very instant passed. On a strange mob of panting trees, And fences fled away, And rivers where the houses ran The living looked that day. The bell within the steeple wild The flying tidings whirled. How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the world!

XXVII.

THE SPIDER.

A spider sewed at night Without a light Upon an arc of white. If ruff it was of dame Or shroud of gnome, Himself, himself inform. Of immortality His strategy Was physiognomy.

XXVIII.

I know a place where summer strives With such a practised frost, She each year leads her daisies back, Recording briefly, "Lost."

But when the south wind stirs the pools And struggles in the lanes, Her heart misgives her for her vow, And she pours soft refrains

Into the lap of adamant, And spices, and the dew, That stiffens quietly to quartz, Upon her amber shoe.

XXIX.

The one that could repeat the summer day Were greater than itself, though he Minutest of mankind might be. And who could reproduce the sun, At period of going down -- The lingering and the stain, I mean -- When Orient has been outgrown, And Occident becomes unknown, His name remain.

XXX.

THE WIND'S VISIT.

The wind tapped like a tired man, And like a host, "Come in," I boldly answered; entered then My residence within

A rapid, footless guest, To offer whom a chair Were as impossible as hand A sofa to the air.

No bone had he to bind him, His speech was like the push Of numerous humming-birds at once From a superior bush.

His countenance a billow, His fingers, if he pass, Let go a music, as of tunes Blown tremulous in glass.

He visited, still flitting; Then, like a timid man, Again he tapped -- 't was flurriedly -- And I became alone.

XXXI.

Nature rarer uses yellow Than another hue; Saves she all of that for sunsets, -- Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman, Yellow she affords Only scantly and selectly, Like a lover's words.

XXXII.

GOSSIP.