Emlyn Dickinson's Herbarium @herbarium@botsin.space

She slept beneath a tree
Remembered but by me.
I touched her cradle mute;
She recognized the foot,
Put on her carmine suit, --
And see!
A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here
A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.

The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon a floor.
The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.

A wounded deer leaps highest,
I've heard the hunter tell;
'T is but the ecstasy of death,
And then the brake is still.
The smitten rock that gushes,
The trampled steel that springs;
A cheek is always redder
Just where the hectic stings!
Mirth is the mail of anguish,
In which it cautions arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And "You're hurt" exclaim!

New children play upon the green,
New weary sleep below;
And still the pensive spring returns,
And still the punctual snow!
Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,
Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.
Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.

Not any voice denotes it here,
Or intimates it there;
A spirit, how doth it accost?
What customs hath the air?
This limitless hyperbole
Each one of us shall be;
'T is drama, if (hypothesis)
It be not tragedy!
She laid her docile crescent down,
And this mechanic stone
Still states, to dates that have forgot,
The news that she is gone.

Mine enemy is growing old, --
I have at last revenge.
The palate of the hate departs;
If any would avenge, --
Let him be quick, the viand flits,
It is a faded meat.
Anger as soon as fed is dead;
'T is starving makes it fat.
Remorse is memory awake,
Her companies astir, --
A presence of departed acts
At window and at door.

It burned me in the night,
It blistered in my dream;
It sickened fresh upon my sight
With every morning's beam.
I thought that storm was brief, --
The maddest, quickest by;
But Nature lost the date of this,
And left it in the sky.

As children bid the guest good-night,
And then reluctant turn,
My flowers raise their pretty lips,
Then put their nightgowns on.
As children caper when they wake,
Merry that it is morn,
My flowers from a hundred cribs
Will peep, and prance again.

Of robins in the trundle bed
How many I espy
Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings,
Although I heard them try!
But then I promised ne'er to tell;
How could I break my word?
So go your way and I'll go mine, --
No fear you'll miss the road.
Morning is the place for dew,
Corn is made at noon,
After dinner light for flowers,
Dukes for setting sun!

This bird, observing others,
When frosts too sharp became,
Retire to other latitudes,
Quietly did the same,
But differed in returning;
Since Yorkshire hills are green,
Yet not in all the nests I meet
Can nightingale be seen.

The dust replaced in hoisted roads,
The birds jocoser sung;
The sunshine threw his hat away,
The orchards spangles hung.
The breezes brought dejected lutes,
And bathed them in the glee;
The East put out a single flag,
And signed the fete away.
A something in a summer's day,
As slow her flambeaux burn away,
Which solemnizes me.

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun, --
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,
And certainly that one
No color in the rainbow
Perceives when you are gone.
There's something quieter than sleep
Within this inner room!
It wears a sprig upon its breast,
And will not tell its name.

Say, sea,
Take me!
I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf

Prayer is the little implement
Through which men reach
Where presence is denied them.
They fling their speech
By means of it in God's ear;
If then He hear,
This sums the apparatus
Comprised in prayer.

New feet within my garden go,
New fingers stir the sod;
A troubadour upon the elm
Betrays the solitude.
New children play upon the green,
New weary sleep below;
And still the pensive spring returns,
And still the punctual snow!

The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then 't was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.
A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him, --
At rest his fingers are.

They won't frown always, -- some sweet day
When I forget to tease,
They'll recollect how cold I looked,
And how I just said 'please.'
Then they will hasten to the door
To call the little child,
Who cannot thank them, for the ice
That on her lisping piled.

A pleader, a dissembler,
An epicure, a thief, --
Betimes an oratorio,
An ecstasy in chief;
The Jesuit of orchards,
He cheats as he enchants
Of an entire attar
For his decamping wants.
The splendor of a Burmah,
The meteor of birds,
Departing like a pageant
Of ballads and of bards.
I never thought that Jason sought
For any golden fleece;
But then I am a rural man,
With thoughts that make for peace.

Why, I will lend until just then,
But not an hour more!
The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.