O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day
    cannot,
I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.

1860 1871

THOUGHT

As I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music
    is playing,
To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral in mist
    of a wreck at sea,
Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers
    and wafted kisses, and that is the last of them,
Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the
    President,
Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations
    founder'd off the Northeast coast and going down — of the
    steamship Arctic going down,
Of the veil'd tableau — women gather'd together on deck,
    pale, heroic, waiting the moment that draws so close — O
    the moment!
A huge sob — a few bubbles — the white foam spirting up —
    and then the women gone,
Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on — and I now
    pondering, Are those women gone?
Are souls drown'd and destroy'd so?
Is only matter triumphants?

      
1860 1871
     

THE LAST INVOCATION

At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the
    well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.

HEAVENLY DEATH

Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks — with a whisper,
Set ope the doors O soul.

Tenderly — be not impatient,
(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold O love.)

1868 1871

AS I WATCH'D THE PLOUGHMAN PLOUGHING

As I watch'd the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;
(Life, life is the tillage, Death is the harvest according.)

      
1871 1871
     

PENSIVE AND FALTERING

Pensive and faltering,
The words the Dead I write,
For living are the Dead,
(Haply the only living, only real,
And I the apparition, I the spectre.)

1868 1871