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Эмили Дикинсон
Poems by Emily Dickinson, Third Series

XV

 
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, —
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.
 

XVI.
THE WIND

 
It's like the light, —
  A fashionless delight
It's like the bee, —
  A dateless melody.
 
 
It's like the woods,
  Private like breeze,
Phraseless, yet it stirs
  The proudest trees.
 
 
It's like the morning, —
  Best when it's done, —
The everlasting clocks
  Chime noon.
 

XVII

 
A dew sufficed itself
  And satisfied a leaf,
And felt, 'how vast a destiny!
  How trivial is life!'
 
 
The sun went out to work,
  The day went out to play,
But not again that dew was seen
  By physiognomy.
 
 
Whether by day abducted,
  Or emptied by the sun
Into the sea, in passing,
  Eternally unknown.
 

XVIII.
THE WOODPECKER

 
His bill an auger is,
  His head, a cap and frill.
He laboreth at every tree, —
  A worm his utmost goal.
 

XIX.
A SNAKE

 
Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
  Until we meet a snake;
'T is then we sigh for houses,
  And our departure take
At that enthralling gallop
  That only childhood knows.
A snake is summer's treason,
  And guile is where it goes.
 

XX

 
Could I but ride indefinite,
  As doth the meadow-bee,
And visit only where I liked,
  And no man visit me,
 
 
And flirt all day with buttercups,
  And marry whom I may,
And dwell a little everywhere,
  Or better, run away
 
 
With no police to follow,
  Or chase me if I do,
Till I should jump peninsulas
  To get away from you, —
 
 
I said, but just to be a bee
  Upon a raft of air,
And row in nowhere all day long,
  And anchor off the bar,—
What liberty! So captives deem
  Who tight in dungeons are.
 

XXI.
THE MOON

 
The moon was but a chin of gold
  A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
  Upon the world below.
 
 
Her forehead is of amplest blond;
  Her cheek like beryl stone;
Her eye unto the summer dew
  The likest I have known.
 
 
Her lips of amber never part;
  But what must be the smile
Upon her friend she could bestow
  Were such her silver will!
 
 
And what a privilege to be
  But the remotest star!
For certainly her way might pass
  Beside your twinkling door.
 
 
Her bonnet is the firmament,
  The universe her shoe,
The stars the trinkets at her belt,
  Her dimities of blue.
 

XXII.
THE BAT

 
The bat is dun with wrinkled wings
  Like fallow article,
And not a song pervades his lips,
  Or none perceptible.
 
 
His small umbrella, quaintly halved,
  Describing in the air
An arc alike inscrutable, —
  Elate philosopher!
 
 
Deputed from what firmament
  Of what astute abode,
Empowered with what malevolence
  Auspiciously withheld.
 
 
To his adroit Creator
  Ascribe no less the praise;
Beneficent, believe me,
  His eccentricities.
 

XXIII.
THE BALLOON

 
You've seen balloons set, haven't you?
  So stately they ascend
It is as swans discarded you
  For duties diamond.
 
 
Their liquid feet go softly out
  Upon a sea of blond;
They spurn the air as 't were too mean
  For creatures so renowned.
 
 
Their ribbons just beyond the eye,
  They struggle some for breath,
And yet the crowd applauds below;
  They would not encore death.
 
 
The gilded creature strains and spins,
  Trips frantic in a tree,
Tears open her imperial veins
  And tumbles in the sea.
 
 
The crowd retire with an oath
  The dust in streets goes down,
And clerks in counting-rooms observe,
  ''T was only a balloon.'
 

XXIV.
EVENING

 
The cricket sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
  Their seam the day upon.
 
 
The low grass loaded with the dew,
The twilight stood as strangers do
With hat in hand, polite and new,
  To stay as if, or go.
 
 
A vastness, as a neighbor, came, —
A wisdom without face or name,
A peace, as hemispheres at home, —
  And so the night became.
 

XXV.
COCOON

 
Drab habitation of whom?
Tabernacle or tomb,
Or dome of worm,
Or porch of gnome,
Or some elf's catacomb?
 

XXVI.
SUNSET

 
A sloop of amber slips away
  Upon an ether sea,
And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
  The son of ecstasy.
 

XXVII.
AURORA

 
Of bronze and blaze
  The north, to-night!
  So adequate its forms,
So preconcerted with itself,
  So distant to alarms, —
An unconcern so sovereign
  To universe, or me,
It paints my simple spirit
  With tints of majesty,
Till I take vaster attitudes,
  And strut upon my stem,
Disdaining men and oxygen,
  For arrogance of them.
 
 
My splendors are menagerie;
  But their competeless show
Will entertain the centuries
  When I am, long ago,
An island in dishonored grass,
  Whom none but daisies know.
 

XXVIII.
THE COMING OF NIGHT

 
How the old mountains drip with sunset,
  And the brake of dun!
How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
  By the wizard sun!
 
 
How the old steeples hand the scarlet,
  Till the ball is full, —
Have I the lip of the flamingo
  That I dare to tell?
 
 
Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,
  Touching all the grass
With a departing, sapphire feature,
  As if a duchess pass!
 
 
How a small dusk crawls on the village
  Till the houses blot;
And the odd flambeaux no men carry
  Glimmer on the spot!
 
 
Now it is night in nest and kennel,
  And where was the wood,
Just a dome of abyss is nodding
  Into solitude! —
 
 
These are the visions baffled Guido;
  Titian never told;
Domenichino dropped the pencil,
  Powerless to unfold.
 

XXIX.
AFTERMATH

 
The murmuring of bees has ceased;
  But murmuring of some
Posterior, prophetic,
  Has simultaneous come, —
 
 
The lower metres of the year,
  When nature's laugh is done, —
The Revelations of the book
  Whose Genesis is June.
 

IV. TIME AND ETERNITY

I

 
This world is not conclusion;
  A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
  But positive, as sound.
It beckons and it baffles;
  Philosophies don't know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
  Sagacity must go.
To guess it puzzles scholars;
  To gain it, men have shown
Contempt of generations,
  And crucifixion known.
 

II

 
We learn in the retreating
  How vast an one
Was recently among us.
  A perished sun
 
 
Endears in the departure
  How doubly more
Than all the golden presence
  It was before!
 

III

 
They say that 'time assuages,' —
  Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
  As sinews do, with age.
 
 
Time is a test of trouble,
  But not a remedy.
If such it prove, it prove too
  There was no malady.
 

IV

 
We cover thee, sweet face.
  Not that we tire of thee,
But that thyself fatigue of us;
  Remember, as thou flee,
We follow thee until
  Thou notice us no more,
And then, reluctant, turn away
  To con thee o'er and o'er,
And blame the scanty love
  We were content to show,
Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold
  If thou would'st take it now.
 

V.
ENDING

 
That is solemn we have ended, —
  Be it but a play,
Or a glee among the garrets,
  Or a holiday,
 
 
Or a leaving home; or later,
  Parting with a world
We have understood, for better
  Still it be unfurled.
 

VI

 
The stimulus, beyond the grave
  His countenance to see,
Supports me like imperial drams
  Afforded royally.
 

VII

 
Given in marriage unto thee,
  Oh, thou celestial host!
Bride of the Father and the Son,
  Bride of the Holy Ghost!
 
 
Other betrothal shall dissolve,
  Wedlock of will decay;
Only the keeper of this seal
  Conquers mortality.
 

VIII

 
That such have died enables us
  The tranquiller to die;
That such have lived, certificate
  For immortality.
 

IX

 
They won't frown always, – some sweet day
  When I forget to tease,
They'll recollect how cold I looked,
  And how I just said 'please.'
 
 
Then they will hasten to the door
  To call the little child,
Who cannot thank them, for the ice
  That on her lisping piled.