I knew not but the next
  Would be my final inch, —­
This gave me that precarious gait
  Some call experience.

LIV.

Thanksgiving day.

One day is there of the series
  Termed Thanksgiving day,
Celebrated part at table,
  Part in memory.

Neither patriarch nor pussy,
  I dissect the play;
Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
  Reflex holiday.

Had there been no sharp subtraction
  From the early sum,
Not an acre or a caption
  Where was once a room,

Not a mention, whose small pebble
  Wrinkled any bay, —­
Unto such, were such assembly,
  ’T were Thanksgiving day.

LV.

Childish griefs.

Softened by Time’s consummate plush,
  How sleek the woe appears
That threatened childhood’s citadel
  And undermined the years!

Bisected now by bleaker griefs,
  We envy the despair
That devastated childhood’s realm,
  So easy to repair.

II.  LOVE.

I.

Consecration.

Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,
  Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,
Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,
  Not to partake thy passion, my humility.

II.

Love’s humility.

My worthiness is all my doubt,
  His merit all my fear,
Contrasting which, my qualities
  Do lowlier appear;

Lest I should insufficient prove
  For his beloved need,
The chiefest apprehension
  Within my loving creed.

So I, the undivine abode
  Of his elect content,
Conform my soul as ’t were a church
  Unto her sacrament.

III.

Love.

Love is anterior to life,
  Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
  The exponent of breath.

IV.

Satisfied.

One blessing had I, than the rest
  So larger to my eyes
That I stopped gauging, satisfied,
  For this enchanted size.

It was the limit of my dream,
  The focus of my prayer, —­
A perfect, paralyzing bliss
  Contented as despair.

I knew no more of want or cold,
  Phantasms both become,
For this new value in the soul,
  Supremest earthly sum.

The heaven below the heaven above
  Obscured with ruddier hue. 
Life’s latitude leant over-full;
  The judgment perished, too.

Why joys so scantily disburse,
  Why Paradise defer,
Why floods are served to us in bowls, —­
  I speculate no more.