The Master.

He fumbles at your spirit
  As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
  He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance
  For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
  Then nearer, then so slow

Your breath has time to straighten,
  Your brain to bubble cool, —­
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
  That scalps your naked soul.

XIII.

Heart, we will forget him! 
  You and I, to-night! 
You may forget the warmth he gave,
  I will forget the light.

When you have done, pray tell me,
  That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you’re lagging,
  I may remember him!

XIV.

Father, I bring thee not myself, —­
  That were the little load;
I bring thee the imperial heart
  I had not strength to hold.

The heart I cherished in my own
  Till mine too heavy grew,
Yet strangest, heavier since it went,
  Is it too large for you?

XV.

We outgrow love like other things
  And put it in the drawer,
Till it an antique fashion shows
  Like costumes grandsires wore.

XVI.

Not with a club the heart is broken,
    Nor with a stone;
A whip, so small you could not see it. 
    I’ve known

To lash the magic creature
    Till it fell,
Yet that whip’s name too noble
    Then to tell.

Magnanimous of bird
    By boy descried,
To sing unto the stone
    Of which it died.

XVII.

Who?

My friend must be a bird,
    Because it flies! 
Mortal my friend must be,
    Because it dies! 
Barbs has it, like a bee. 
Ah, curious friend,
    Thou puzzlest me!

XVIII.

He touched me, so I live to know
That such a day, permitted so,
  I groped upon his breast. 
It was a boundless place to me,
And silenced, as the awful sea
  Puts minor streams to rest.

And now, I’m different from before,
As if I breathed superior air,
  Or brushed a royal gown;
My feet, too, that had wandered so,
My gypsy face transfigured now
  To tenderer renown.

XIX.

Dreams.

Let me not mar that perfect dream
  By an auroral stain,
But so adjust my daily night
  That it will come again.

XX.

Numen lumen.

I live with him, I see his face;
  I go no more away
For visitor, or sundown;
  Death’s single privacy,