Put me in on the firmest side,
  So I shall never fall;
For we must ride to the Judgment,
  And it’s partly down hill.

But never I mind the bridges,
  And never I mind the sea;
Held fast in everlasting race
  By my own choice and thee.

Good-by to the life I used to live,
  And the world I used to know;
And kiss the hills for me, just once;
  Now I am ready to go!

XXXVII.

The dying need but little, dear, —­
  A glass of water’s all,
A flower’s unobtrusive face
  To punctuate the wall,

A fan, perhaps, a friend’s regret,
  And certainly that one
No color in the rainbow
  Perceives when you are gone.

XXXVIII.

Dead.

There’s something quieter than sleep
  Within this inner room! 
It wears a sprig upon its breast,
  And will not tell its name.

Some touch it and some kiss it,
  Some chafe its idle hand;
It has a simple gravity
  I do not understand!

While simple-hearted neighbors
  Chat of the ‘early dead,’
We, prone to periphrasis,
  Remark that birds have fled!

XXXIX.

The soul should always stand ajar,
  That if the heaven inquire,
He will not be obliged to wait,
  Or shy of troubling her.

Depart, before the host has slid
  The bolt upon the door,
To seek for the accomplished guest, —­
  Her visitor no more.

XL.

Three weeks passed since I had seen her, —­
  Some disease had vexed;
’T was with text and village singing
  I beheld her next,

And a company —­ our pleasure
  To discourse alone;
Gracious now to me as any,
  Gracious unto none.

Borne, without dissent of either,
  To the parish night;
Of the separated people
  Which are out of sight?

XLI.

I breathed enough to learn the trick,
  And now, removed from air,
I simulate the breath so well,
  That one, to be quite sure

The lungs are stirless, must descend
  Among the cunning cells,
And touch the pantomime himself. 
  How cool the bellows feels!

XLII.

I wonder if the sepulchre
  Is not a lonesome way,
When men and boys, and larks and June
  Go down the fields to hay!

XLIII.

Joy in death.

If tolling bell I ask the cause. 
  ‘A soul has gone to God,’
I’m answered in a lonesome tone;
  Is heaven then so sad?

That bells should joyful ring to tell
  A soul had gone to heaven,
Would seem to me the proper way
  A good news should be given.