A Pit -- but Heaven over it --
And Heaven beside, and Heaven abroad,
And yet a Pit --
With Heaven over it.
To stir would be to slip --
To look would be to drop --
To dream -- to sap the Prop
That holds my chances up.
Ah! Pit! With Heaven over it!
The depth is all my thought --
I dare not ask my feet --
'Twould start us where we sit
So straight you'd scarce suspect
It was a Pit -- with fathoms under it --
Its Circuit just the same.
Seed -- summer -- tomb --
I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!
Angels -- twice descending
Reimbursed my store --
Burglar! Banker -- Father!
I am poor once more!
What will they do when I am gone? It is plain
That they will do without me as the rain
Can do without the flowers and the grass
That profit by it and must perish without.
I have but seen them in the loud street pass;
And I was naught to them. I turned about
To see them disappearing carelessly.
But what if I in them as they in me
Nourished what has great value and no price?
Almost I thought that rain thirsts for a draught
Which only in the blossom's chalice lies,
Until that one turned back and lightly laughed.
The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds,
Are lips--and all thy melody
Of lip-begotten words--
Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined
Then desolately fall,
O God! on my funereal mind
Like starlight on a pall--
Thy heart--thy heart!--I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day
Of the truth that gold can never buy--
Of the baubles that it may.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.
We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.
Only the wind knows he is gone,
Only the wind grieves,
The sun shines, the fields are sown,
Sparrows mate in the eaves;
But I heard the wind in the pines he planted
And the hemlocks overhead,
“His acres wake, for the year turns,
But he is asleep,” it said.
Rebellion against death, the old rebellion
Is over; I have nothing left to fight;
Battles have always had their meed of music
But peace is quiet as a windless night.
Therefore I make no songs--I have grown certain
Save when he comes too late, death is a friend,
A shepherd leading home his flock serenely
Under the planet at the evening’s end.
The birds are gathering over the dunes,
Swerving and wheeling in shifting flight,
A thousand wings sweep darkly by
Over the dunes and out of sight.
Why did you bring me down to the sea
With the gathering birds and the fish-hawk flying,
The tide is low and the wind is hard,
Nothing is left but the old year dying.
I wish I were one of the gathering birds,
Two sharp black wings would be good for me--
When nothing is left but the old year dying,
Why did you bring me down to the sea?
Careless forever, beautiful proud sea,
You laugh in happy thunder all alone,
You fold upon yourself, you dance your dance
Impartially on drift-weed, sand or stone.
You make us believe that we can outlive death,
You make us for an instant, for your sake,
Burn, like stretched silver of a wave,
Not breaking, but about to break.
Now since they plucked them for your grave,
And left the garden bare
As a great house of candlelight,
Oh, nothing else so fair!
I knew before that they were white.
In April by a wall,
A dozen or more. That people died
I did not know at all.
The destined bullet wounded him,
They brought him down to die,
Far-off a bugle sounded him
“Retreat,” Good-bye.
Strange, that from ways so hated,
And tyranny so hard
Should come this strangely fated
And farewell word.
He thought, “Some Old Sweat might
Have thrilled at heart to hear,
Gone down into the night
Too proud to fear!
But I--the fool at arms,
Musician, poet to boot,
Who hail release; what charms
In this salute?”