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.