How many Flowers fail in Wood --
Or perish from the Hill --
Without the privilege to know
That they are Beautiful --
How many cast a nameless Pod
Upon the nearest Breeze --
Unconscious of the Scarlet Freight --
It bear to Other Eyes --
Nature assigns the Sun --
That -- is Astronomy --
Nature cannot enact a Friend --
That -- is Astrology.
As if some little Arctic flower
Upon the polar hem --
Went wandering down the Latitudes
Until it puzzled came
To continents of summer --
To firmaments of sun --
To strange, bright crowds of flowers --
And birds, of foreign tongue!
I say, As if this little flower
To Eden, wandered in --
What then? Why nothing,
Only, your inference therefrom!
If Nature smiles -- the Mother must
I'm sure, at many a whim
Of Her eccentric Family --
Is She so much to blame?
If I could bribe them by a Rose
I'd bring them every flower that grows
From Amherst to Cashmere!
I would not stop for night, or storm --
Or frost, or death, or anyone --
My business were so dear!
If they would linger for a Bird
My Tambourin were soonest heard
Among the April Woods!
Unwearied, all the summer long,
Only to break in wilder song
When Winter shook the boughs!
What if they hear me!
Who shall say
That such an importunity
May not at last avail?
Though the great Waters sleep,
That they are still the Deep,
We cannot doubt --
No vacillating God
Ignited this Abode
To put it out --
Nature can do no more
She has fulfilled her Dyes
Whatever Flower fail to come
Of other Summer days
Her crescent reimburse
If other Summers be
Nature's imposing negative
Nulls opportunity --
Flowers -- Well -- if anybody
Can the ecstasy define --
Half a transport -- half a trouble --
With which flowers humble men:
Anybody find the fountain
From which floods so contra flow --
I will give him all the Daisies
Which upon the hillside blow.
Too much pathos in their faces
For a simple breast like mine --
Butterflies from St. Domingo
Cruising round the purple line --
Have a system of aesthetics --
Far superior to mine.
Talk not to me of Summer Trees
The foliage of the mind
A Tabernacle is for Birds
Of no corporeal kind
And winds do go that way at noon
To their Ethereal Homes
Whose Bugles call the least of us
To undepicted Realms
From Cocoon forth a Butterfly
As Lady from her Door
Emerged -- a Summer Afternoon --
Repairing Everywhere --
Without Design -- that I could trace
Except to stray abroad
On Miscellaneous Enterprise
The Clovers -- understood --
Her pretty Parasol be seen
Contracting in a Field
Where Men made Hay --
Then struggling hard
With an opposing Cloud --
Where Parties -- Phantom as Herself --
To Nowhere -- seemed to go
In purposeless Circumference --
"Heaven" has different Signs -- to me --
Sometimes, I think that Noon
Is but a symbol of the Place --
And when again, at Dawn,
A mighty look runs round the World
And settles in the Hills --
An Awe if it should be like that
Upon the Ignorance steals --
The Orchard, when the Sun is on --
The Triumph of the Birds
When they together Victory make --
Some Carnivals of Clouds --
The Rapture of a finished Day --
Returning to the West --
All these -- remind us of the place
That Men call "paradise" --
Nature affects to be sedate
Upon occasion, grand
But let our observation shut
Her practices extend
To Necromancy and the Trades
Remote to understand
Behold our spacious Citizen
Unto a Juggler turned --