Poems by Emily Dickinson Part 11

IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.

I.

One dignity delays for all, One mitred afternoon.

None can avoid this purple, None evade this crown.

Coach it insures, and footmen, Chamber and state and throng; Bells, also, in the village, As we ride grand along.

What dignified attendants, What service when we pause!

How loyally at parting Their hundred hats they raise!

How pomp surpa.s.sing ermine, When simple you and I Present our meek escutcheon, And claim the rank to die!

II.

TOO LATE.

Delayed till she had ceased to know, Delayed till in its vest of snow Her loving bosom lay.

An hour behind the fleeting breath, Later by just an hour than death, -- Oh, lagging yesterday!

Could she have guessed that it would be; Could but a crier of the glee Have climbed the distant hill; Had not the bliss so slow a pace, -- Who knows but this surrendered face Were undefeated still?

Oh, if there may departing be Any forgot by victory In her imperial round, Show them this meek apparelled thing, That could not stop to be a king, Doubtful if it be crowned!

III.

ASTRA CASTRA.

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.

IV.

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.

Light laughs the breeze in her castle of suns.h.i.+ne; Babbles the bee in a stolid ear; Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, -- Ah, what sagacity perished here!

Grand go the years in the crescent above them; Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row, Diadems drop and Doges surrender, Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.

V.

On this long storm the rainbow rose, On this late morn the sun; The clouds, like listless elephants, Horizons straggled down.

The birds rose smiling in their nests, The gales indeed were done; Alas! how heedless were the eyes On whom the summer shone!

The quiet nonchalance of death No daybreak can bestir; The slow archangel's syllables Must awaken her.

VI.

FROM THE CHRYSALIS.

My coc.o.o.n tightens, colors tease, I'm feeling for the air; A dim capacity for wings Degrades the dress I wear.

A power of b.u.t.terfly must be The apt.i.tude to fly, Meadows of majesty concedes And easy sweeps of sky.

So I must baffle at the hint And cipher at the sign, And make much blunder, if at last I take the clew divine.

VII.

SETTING SAIL.

Exultation is the going Of an inland soul to sea, -- Past the houses, past the headlands, Into deep eternity!

Bred as we, among the mountains, Can the sailor understand The divine intoxication Of the first league out from land?

VIII.