Emlyn Dickinson's Herbarium @herbarium@botsin.space

The gentian weaves her fringes,
The maple's loom is red.
My departing blossoms
Obviate parade.
A brief, but patient illness,
An hour to prepare;
And one, below this morning,
Is where the angels are.
It was a short procession, --
The bobolink was there,
An aged bee addressed us,
And then we knelt in prayer.

Never did she lisp it,
And 't was not for me;
She was mute from transport,
I, from agony!
Till the evening, nearing,
One the shutters drew --
Quick! a sharper rustling!
And this linnet flew!

Fell, they will say, in 'skirmish'!
Vanquished, my soul will know,
By but a simple arrow
Sped by an archer's bow.
He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,

With no police to follow,
Or chase me if I do,
Till I should jump peninsulas
To get away from you, --
I said, but just to be a bee
Upon a raft of air,
And row in nowhere all day long,
And anchor off the bar,--
What liberty! So captives deem
Who tight in dungeons are.
The moon was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.

On such a dawn, or such a dawn,
Would anybody sigh
That such a little figure
Too sound asleep did lie
For chanticleer to wake it, --
Or stirring house below,
Or giddy bird in orchard,
Or early task to do?
There was a little figure plump
For every little knoll,
Busy needles, and spools of thread,
And trudging feet from school.

The day came slow, till five o'clock,
Then sprang before the hills
Like hindered rubies, or the light
A sudden musket spills.
The purple could not keep the east,
The sunrise shook from fold,
Like breadths of topaz, packed a night,
The lady just unrolled.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:
A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.
A lady red upon the hill
Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white within the field
In placid lily sleeps!

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.
A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, -- did you not,
His notice sudden is.

And struggle slacker, but to prove,
As hopelessly as I,
How many the fictitious shores
Before the harbor lie.
Unto my books so good to turn
Far ends of tired days;
It half endears the abstinence,
And pain is missed in praise.

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

To-morrow, night will come again,
Weary, perhaps, and sore.
Ah, bugle, by my window,
I pray you stroll once more!
I many times thought peace had come,
When peace was far away;
As wrecked men deem they sight the land
At centre of the sea,

The crowd retire with an oath
The dust in streets goes down,
And clerks in counting-rooms observe,
''T was only a balloon.'
The cricket sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
Their seam the day upon.

Wait till in everlasting robes
This democrat is dressed,
Then prate about "preferment"
And "station" and the rest!
Around this quiet courtier
Obsequious angels wait!
Full royal is his retinue,
Full purple is his state!
A lord might dare to lift the hat
To such a modest clay,
Since that my Lord, "the Lord of lords"
Receives unblushingly!

The robins stand as thick to-day
As flakes of snow stood yesterday,
On fence and roof and twig.
The orchis binds her feather on
For her old lover, Don the Sun,
Revisiting the bog!
Without commander, countless, still,
The regiment of wood and hill
In bright detachment stand.
Behold! Whose multitudes are these?
The children of whose turbaned seas,
Or what Circassian land?

What inn is this
Where for the night
Peculiar traveller comes?
Who is the landlord?
Where the maids?
Behold, what curious rooms!
No ruddy fires on the hearth,
No brimming tankards flow.
Necromancer, landlord,
Who are these below?
It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.

Departed to the judgment,
A mighty afternoon;
Great clouds like ushers leaning,
Creation looking on.
The flesh surrendered, cancelled,
The bodiless begun;
Two worlds, like audiences, disperse
And leave the soul alone.
Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

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.

Somebody flings a mattress out, --
The children hurry by;
They wonder if It died on that, --
I used to when a boy.
The minister goes stiffly in
As if the house were his,
And he owned all the mourners now,
And little boys besides;
And then the milliner, and the man
Of the appalling trade,
To take the measure of the house.
There'll be that dark parade

A deed knocks first at thought,
And then it knocks at will.
That is the manufacturing spot,
And will at home and well.
It then goes out an act,
Or is entombed so still
That only to the ear of God
Its doom is audible.

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.