children
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I can’t tell you — but you feel it –
Nor can you tell me –
Saints, with ravished slate and pencil
Solve our April Day!
Sweeter than a vanished frolic
From a vanished green!
Swifter than the hoofs of Horsemen
Round a Ledge of dream!
Modest, let us walk among it
With our faces veiled –
As they say polite Archangels
Do in meeting God!
Not for me — to prate about it!
Not for you — to say
To some fashionable Lady
“Charming April Day”!
Rather — Heaven’s “Peter Parley”!
By which Children slow
To sublimer Recitation
Are prepared to go!
Tags: april, archangels, children, dream, faces, fashionable, feel, frolic, god, green, heaven, hoofs, horesmen, lady, ledge, modest, pencil, polite, prate, ravished, recitation, saints, say, slate, slow, solve, sublimer, sweeter, swifter, tell, vanished, veiled, walk
“Houses” — so the Wise Men tell me –
“Mansions”! Mansions must be warm!
Mansions cannot let the tears in,
Mansions must exclude the storm!
“Many Mansions,” by “his Father,”
I don’t know him; snugly built!
Could the Children find the way there –
Some, would even trudge tonight!
Tags: built, children, father, houses, mansions, men, snugly, storm, tears, tonight, trudge, warm, wise
Through lane it lay — through bramble –
Through clearing and through wood –
Banditti often passed us
Upon the lonely road.
The wolf came peering curious –
The owl looked puzzled down –
The serpent’s satin figure
Glid stealthily along –
The tempests touched our garments –
The lightning’s poinards gleamed –
Fierce from the Crag above us
The hungry Vulture screamed –
The satyr’s fingers beckoned –
The valley murmured “Come” –
These were the mates –
This was the road
Those children fluttered home.
Tags: children, crag, curious, fierce, fluttered, garments, home, lighting, mates, owl, poinards, puzzled, road, satyr, tempest, touch, valley, vulture, wolf
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
Of tassels and of coaches soon;
It’s easy as a sign, –
The intuition of the news
In just a country town.
Tags: away, bee, children, death, die, fly, house
As far from pity as complaint,
As cool to speech as stone,
As numb to revelation
As if my trade were bone.
As far from time as history,
As near yourself to-day
As children to the rainbow’s scarf,
Or sunset’s yellow play
To eyelids in the sepulchre.
How still the dancer lies,
While color’s revelations break,
And blaze the butterflies!
Tags: children, sun
Some, too fragile for winter winds,
The thoughtful grave encloses, –
Tenderly tucking them in from frost
Before their feet are cold.
Never the treasures in her nest
The cautious grave exposes,
Building where schoolboy dare not look
And sportsman is not bold.
This covert have all the children
Early aged, and often cold, –
Sparrows unnoticed by the Father;
Lambs for whom time had not a fold.
Tags: children, dare, feet, grave, ice, thought, winter
Arcturus is his other name, –
I’d rather call him star!
It’s so unkind of science
To go and interfere!
I pull a flower from the woods, –
A monster with a glass
Computes the stamens in a breath,
And has her in a class.
Whereas I took the butterfly
Aforetime in my hat,
He sits erect in cabinets,
The clover-bells forgot.
What once was heaven, is zenith now.
Where I proposed to go
When time’s brief masquerade was done,
Is mapped, and charted too!
What if the poles should frisk about
And stand upon their heads!
I hope I ‘m ready for the worst,
Whatever prank betides!
Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven ‘s changed!
I hope the children there
Won’t be new-fashioned when I come,
And laugh at me, and stare!
I hope the father in the skies
Will lift his little girl, –
Old-fashioned, naughty, everything, –
Over the stile of pearl!
Tags: children, flower, fly, hope, Love, men, skies, star, woods
Nature, the gentlest mother,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest, –
Her admonition mild
In forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.
How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon, –
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes down
Her voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.
When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky
With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.
The official Daily Dickinson 2008 Calendar is available, featuring poems and pictures that have been featured on this site.
Tags: away, bee, bird, care, children, fair, flower, house, ice, Nature, noon, poem, sky, summer, sun
