If the foolish call them ‘flowers,’
  Need the wiser tell? 
If the savans ‘classify’ them,
  It is just as well!

Those who read the Revelations
  Must not criticise
Those who read the same edition
  With beclouded eyes!

Could we stand with that old Moses
  Canaan denied, —­
Scan, like him, the stately landscape
  On the other side, —­

Doubtless we should deem superfluous
  Many sciences
Not pursued by learned angels
  In scholastic skies!

Low amid that glad Belles lettres
  Grant that we may stand,
Stars, amid profound Galaxies,
  At that grand ‘Right hand’!

XII.

A syllable.

Could mortal lip divine
  The undeveloped freight
Of a delivered syllable,
  ’T would crumble with the weight.

XIII.

Parting.

My life closed twice before its close;
  It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
  A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
  As these that twice befell. 
Parting is all we know of heaven,
  And all we need of hell.

XIV.

Aspiration.

We never know how high we are
  Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
  Our statures touch the skies.

The heroism we recite
  Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
  For fear to be a king.

XV.

The inevitable.

While I was fearing it, it came,
  But came with less of fear,
Because that fearing it so long
  Had almost made it dear. 
There is a fitting a dismay,
  A fitting a despair. 
’Tis harder knowing it is due,
  Than knowing it is here. 
The trying on the utmost,
  The morning it is new,
Is terribler than wearing it
  A whole existence through.

XVI.

A book.

There is no frigate like a book
  To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
  Of prancing poetry. 
This traverse may the poorest take
  Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
  That bears a human soul!

XVII.

Who has not found the heaven below
  Will fail of it above. 
God’s residence is next to mine,
  His furniture is love.

XVIII.

A portrait.

A face devoid of love or grace,
  A hateful, hard, successful face,
A face with which a stone
  Would feel as thoroughly at ease
As were they old acquaintances, —­
  First time together thrown.