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My dear, I wonder if before the end You ever thought about a children’s game— I’m sure you must have played it too—in which You ran along a narrow garden wall Pretending it to be a mountain ledge So steep a snowy darkness fell away On either side to deeps invisible; And when you felt your balance being lost You jumped because you feared to fall, and thought For only an instant: That was when I died. That was a life ago. And now you’ve gone, Who would no longer play the grown-ups’ game Where, balanced on the ledge above the dark, You go on running and you don’t look down, Nor ever jump because you fear to fall.

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attain'd his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the even-song; And, having pray'd together, we Will go with you along. We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or anything. We die As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer's rain; Or as the pearls of morning's dew, Ne'er to be found again.

The world is full of mostly invisible things, And there is no way but putting the mind’s eye, Or its nose, in a book, to find them out, Things like the square root of Everest Or how many times Byron goes into Texas, Or whether the law of the excluded middle Applies west of the Rockies. For these And the like reasons, you have to go to school And study books and listen to what you are told, And sometimes try to remember. Though I don’t know What you will do with the mean annual rainfall On Plato’s Republic, or the calorie content Of the Diet of Worms, such things are said to be Good for you, and you will have to learn them In order to become one of the grown-ups Who sees invisible things neither steadily nor whole, But keeps gravely the grand confusion of the world Under his hat, which is where it belongs, And teaches small children to do this in their turn.

O King of terrors, whose unbounded sway All that have life must certainly obey; The King, the Priest, the Prophet, all are thine, Nor would ev’n God (in flesh) thy stroke decline. My name is on thy roll, and sure I must Increase thy gloomy kingdom in the dust. My soul at this no apprehension feels, But trembles at thy swords, thy racks, thy wheels; Thy scorching fevers, which distract the sense, And snatch us raving, unprepared, from hence; At thy contagious darts, that wound the heads Of weeping friends, who wait at dying beds. Spare these, and let thy time be when it will; My bus’ness is to die, and thine to kill. Gently thy fatal scepter on me lay, And take to thy cold arms, insensibly, thy prey.

You’ve planted and weeded and wheelbarrowed, now tapping a pencil, trying to remember the next thing—what was it?—when a shape drops from the sky, shudders and stops at a tree—red blotch—whack, whack. A creature big enough on this slow spring day to make you mutter,

The pure products of America go crazy— mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves old names and promiscuity between devil-may-care men who have taken to railroading out of sheer lust of adventure— and young slatterns, bathed in filth from Monday to Saturday to be tricked out that night with gauds from imaginations which have no peasant traditions to give them character but flutter and flaunt sheer rags—succumbing without emotion save numbed terror under some hedge of choke-cherry or viburnum— which they cannot express— Unless it be that marriage perhaps with a dash of Indian blood will throw up a girl so desolate so hemmed round with disease or murder that she'll be rescued by an agent— reared by the state and sent out at fifteen to work in some hard-pressed house in the suburbs— some doctor's family, some Elsie— voluptuous water expressing with broken brain the truth about us— her great ungainly hips and flopping breasts addressed to cheap jewelry and rich young men with fine eyes as if the earth under our feet were an excrement of some sky and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth while the imagination strains after deer going by fields of goldenrod in the stifling heat of September Somehow it seems to destroy us It is only in isolate flecks that something is given off No one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car

I cry your mercy—pity—love! Aye, love! Merciful love that tantalizes not, One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, Unmasked, and being seen—without a blot! O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine! That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine, That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,— Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all, Withhold no atom’s atom or I die, Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall, Forget, in the mist of idle misery, Life’s purposes,—the palate of my mind Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

Gay Fashion thou Goddess so pleasing, However imperious thy sway; Like a mistress capricious and teasing, Thy slaves tho’ they murmur obey. The simple, the wise, and the witty, The learned, the dunce, and the fool, The crooked, straight, ugly, and pretty, Wear the badge of thy whimsical school. Tho’ thy shape be so fickle and changing, That a Proteus thou art to the view; And our taste so for ever deranging, We know not which form to pursue. Yet wave but thy frolicksome banners, And hosts of adherents we see; Arts, morals, religion, and manners, Yield implicit obedience to thee. More despotic than beauty thy power, More than virtue thy rule o’er the mind: Tho’ transient thy reign as a flower, That scatters its leaves to the wind. Ah! while folly thou dealest such measure, No matter how fleeting thy day! Be Wisdom, dear goddess, thy pleasure! Then lasting as time be thy stay.

To fight aloud, is very brave - But gallanter, I know Who charge within the bosom The Calvalry of Wo - Who win, and nations do not see - Who fall - and none observe - Whose dying eyes, no Country Regards with patriot love - We trust, in plumed procession For such, the Angels go - Rank after Rank, with even feet - And Uniforms of snow.

No more savage art: filleting: a deft pressure along the backbone from tail fan to the red gills: fighting mystery with a honed blade through the small bones: salt and scales on face and hands:: the Greek God, as well, found flesh unmysterious, but in anger and disappointment:— seagull cries, your music, are all about you: Apollonian but hungrier: nature is hungry:: the brave fish dies the birds swoop for the insides in no lovelier spirals.