Emlyn Dickinson's Herbarium @herbarium@botsin.space

Like flowers that heard the tale of dews,
But never deemed the dripping prize
Awaited their low brows;
Or bees, that thought the summer's name
Some rumor of delirium
No summer could for them;
Or Arctic creature, dimly stirred
By tropic hint, -- some travelled bird
Imported to the wood;

Mirth is the mail of anguish,
In which it cautions arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And "You're hurt" exclaim!
The heart asks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;

That is solemn we have ended, --
Be it but a play,
Or a glee among the garrets,
Or a holiday,
Or a leaving home; or later,
Parting with a world
We have understood, for better
Still it be unfurled.
The stimulus, beyond the grave
His countenance to see,
Supports me like imperial drams
Afforded royally.

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.

I dared not meet the daffodils,
For fear their yellow gown
Would pierce me with a fashion
So foreign to my own.
I wished the grass would hurry,
So when 't was time to see,
He 'd be too tall, the tallest one
Could stretch to look at me.

That I shall love alway,
I offer thee
That love is life,
And life hath immortality.
This, dost thou doubt, sweet?
Then have I
Nothing to show
But Calvary.
Have you got a brook in your little heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink,
And shadows tremble so?

The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!"
But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

And if my stocking hung too high,
Would it blur the Christmas glee,
That not a Santa Claus could reach
The altitude of me?
But this sort grieved myself, and so
I thought how it would be
When just this time, some perfect year,
Themselves should come to me.

If spoken by the distant bird,
If met in ether sea
By frigate or by merchantman,
Report was not to me.
I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me,
And frigates in the upper floor
Extended hempen hands,
Presuming me to be a mouse
Aground, upon the sands.

So drunk, he disavows it
With badinage divine;
So dazzling, we mistake him
For an alighting mine.
A pleader, a dissembler,
An epicure, a thief, --
Betimes an oratorio,
An ecstasy in chief;

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums,
Counts his nectars -- enters,
And is lost in balms!
New feet within my garden go,
New fingers stir the sod;
A troubadour upon the elm
Betrays the solitude.

To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
The bushes they were bells;
I could not find a privacy
From Nature's sentinels.
In cave if I presumed to hide,
The walls began to tell;
Creation seemed a mighty crack
To make me visible.
A sepal, petal, and a thorn
Upon a common summer's morn,
A flash of dew, a bee or two,
A breeze
A caper in the trees, --
And I'm a rose!

Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.
On such a night, or such a night,
Would anybody care
If such a little figure
Slipped quiet from its chair,

Endears in the departure
How doubly more
Than all the golden presence
It was before!
They say that 'time assuages,' --
Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
As sinews do, with age.

You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.
Alter? When the hills do.
Falter? When the sun
Question if his glory
Be the perfect one.
Surfeit? When the daffodil
Doth of the dew:
Even as herself, O friend!
I will of you!

Meek at whose everlasting feet
A myriad daisies play.
Which, sir, are you, and which am I,
Upon an August day?
The moon is distant from the sea,
And yet with amber hands
She leads him, docile as a boy,
Along appointed sands.

Power is only pain,
Stranded, through discipline,
Till weights will hang.
Give balm to giants,
And they 'll wilt, like men.
Give Himmaleh, --
They 'll carry him!
I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude.
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars, --
Only to fail again!

And then together bore away
Upon a shining sea, --
Though never yet, in any port,
Their coming mentioned be.
If spoken by the distant bird,
If met in ether sea
By frigate or by merchantman,
Report was not to me.
I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me,

Let me not mar that perfect dream
By an auroral stain,
But so adjust my daily night
That it will come again.
I live with him, I see his face;
I go no more away
For visitor, or sundown;
Death's single privacy,

How condescending to descend,
And be of buttercups the friend
In a New England town!
Of all the sounds despatched abroad,
There's not a charge to me
Like that old measure in the boughs,
That phraseless melody