After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round-
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone--

This is the Hour of Lead--
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow--
First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go.

c. 1862 (1929) 

Much madness is divinest Sense--
To a discerning Eye---
Much Sense--the starkest Madness---
'Tis the Majority---
In this, as All, prevail---
Assent--and you are sane---
Demur--you're straightway dangerous---
And handled with a Chain--

c. 1862 (1890) 

This was a Poet--It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings--
And Attar so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door--
. . . .

c. 1862 (1929) 

I died for Beauty--but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room--

He questioned softly "Why I failed?"
"For Beauty," I replied--
"And I--for Truth--Themself are One--
We Brethren are," He said--

And so, as Kinsmen, met at Night--
We talked between the Rooms--
Until the Moss had reached our lips--
And covered up--our names--

c. 1862 (1980) 

I'm ceded--I've stopped being Theirs--
The name They dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church
Is finished using, now,
And They can put it with my Dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools,
I've finished threading--too--

Baptized, before, without the choice,
But this time, consciously, of Grace--
Unto supremest name--
Called to my Full--The Crescent dropped--
Existence's whole Arc, filled up
With one small Diadem

My second Rank--too small the first--
Crowned--Crowing--on my Father's breast--
A half unconscious Queen--
But this time--Adequate--Erect,
With Will to choose, or to reject,
And I choose, just a Crown--

c. 1862 (1890) 

Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnate of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--

Of Visitors--the fairest
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise--

c. 1862 (1929)   

J. 732

She rose to His Requirement--
Dropt the Playthings of Her life
To take the honorable Work
Of Woman, and of Wife--

If ought She missed in Her new Day,
Of Amplitude, or Awe--
Or first Prospective--
Or the Gold In using, wear away,

It lay unmentioned--as the Sea
Develop Pearl, and Weed,
But only to HImself--be known
The Fathoms they abide.

J. 271

A solemn thing--it was--I said--
A woman--white--to be--
And wear--if God should count me fit--
Her blameless mystery--

A halllowed thing--to drop a life
Into the purple well--
Too plummetless--that it return--
Eternity--until--

I pondered how the bliss would look--
And would it feel as big--
When I could take it in my hand--
As hovering--seen--through fog--

And then--the size of this "small" life--
The Sages--call it small--
Swelled--like Horizons--in my vest--
And I sneered--softly--"small"!