XLIV.

If I may have it when it’s dead
  I will contented be;
If just as soon as breath is out
  It shall belong to me,

Until they lock it in the grave,
  ’T is bliss I cannot weigh,
For though they lock thee in the grave,
  Myself can hold the key.

Think of it, lover!  I and thee
  Permitted face to face to be;
After a life, a death we’ll say, —­
  For death was that, and this is thee.

XLV.

Before the ice is in the pools,
  Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
  Is tarnished by the snow,

Before the fields have finished,
  Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
  Will arrive to me!

What we touch the hems of
  On a summer’s day;
What is only walking
  Just a bridge away;

That which sings so, speaks so,
  When there’s no one here, —­
Will the frock I wept in
  Answer me to wear?

XLVI.

Dying.

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
  The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
  Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
  And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
  Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
  What portion of me I
Could make assignable, —­ and then
  There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
  Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
  I could not see to see.

XLVII.

Adrift!  A little boat adrift! 
  And night is coming down! 
Will no one guide a little boat
  Unto the nearest town?

So sailors say, on yesterday,
  Just as the dusk was brown,
One little boat gave up its strife,
  And gurgled down and down.

But angels say, on yesterday,
  Just as the dawn was red,
One little boat o’erspent with gales
Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
  Exultant, onward sped!

XLVIII.

There’s been a death in the opposite house
  As lately as to-day. 
I know it by the numb look
  Such houses have alway.

The neighbors rustle in and out,
  The doctor drives away. 
A window opens like a pod,
  Abrupt, mechanically;

Somebody flings a mattress out, —­
  The children hurry by;
They wonder if It died on that, —­
  I used to when a boy.

The minister goes stiffly in
  As if the house were his,
And he owned all the mourners now,
  And little boys besides;

And then the milliner, and the man
  Of the appalling trade,
To take the measure of the house. 
  There’ll be that dark parade