children

I meant to have but modest needs,
Such as content, and heaven;
Within my income these could lie,
And life and I keep even.

But since the last included both,
It would suffice my prayer
But just for one to stipulate,
And grace would grant the pair.

And so, upon this wise I prayed, –
Great Spirit, give to me
A heaven not so large as yours,
But large enough for me.

A smile suffused Jehovah’s face;
The cherubim withdrew;
Grave saints stole out to look at me,
And showed their dimples, too.

I left the place with all my might, –
My prayer away I threw;
The quiet ages picked it up,
And Judgment twinkled, too,

That one so honest be extant
As take the tale for true
That “Whatsoever you shall ask,
Itself be given you.”

But I, grown shrewder, scan the skies
With a suspicious air, –
As children, swindled for the first,
All swindlers be, infer.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

Or rather He passed us.
The dews drew quivering and chill
For only gossamer, my gown,
My tippet, only tulle.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ‘t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

I think the hemlock likes to stand
Upon a marge of snow;
It suits his own austerity,
And satisfies an awe

That men must slake in wilderness,
Or in the desert cloy, –
An instinct for the hoar, the bald,
Lapland’s necessity.

The hemlock’s nature thrives on cold;
The gnash of northern winds
Is sweetest nutriment to him,
His best Norwegian wines.

To satin races he is nought;
But children on the Don
Beneath his tabernacles play,
And Dnieper wrestlers run.

The mountain sat upon the plain
In his eternal chair,
His observation omnifold,
His inquest everywhere.

The seasons prayed around his knees,
Like children round a sire:
Grandfather of the days is he,
Of dawn the ancestor.

As children bid the guest good-night,
And then reluctant turn,
My flowers raise their pretty lips,
Then put their nightgowns on.

As children caper when they wake,
Merry that it is morn,
My flowers from a hundred cribs
Will peep, and prance again.

Some rainbow coming from the fair!
Some vision of the world Cashmere
I confidently see!
Or else a peacock’s purple train,
Feather by feather, on the plain
Fritters itself away!

The dreamy butterflies bestir,
Lethargic pools resume the whir
Of last year’s sundered tune.
From some old fortress on the sun
Baronial bees march, one by one,
In murmuring platoon!

The robins stand as thick to-day
As flakes of snow stood yesterday,
On fence and roof and twig.
The orchis binds her feather on
For her old lover, Don the Sun,
Revisiting the bog!

Without commander, countless, still,
The regiment of wood and hill
In bright detachment stand.
Behold! Whose multitudes are these?
The children of whose turbaned seas,
Or what Circassian land?

New feet within my garden go,
New fingers stir the sod;
A troubadour upon the elm
Betrays the solitude.

New children play upon the green,
New weary sleep below;
And still the pensive spring returns,
And still the punctual snow!

In an odd twist in a disturbing tale, Emily Dickinson gets a name check in the Central Maine Morning Sentinel.

Over Labor Day weekend, 2006, Christian Nielsen killed four people in and around the town of Newry, a picturesque village in the Maine mountains just up the road from my father’s house. In an area where the biggest news tends to be the visit of Edith’s grandchildren “from away”, a review of the pies served at the First Baptist Church’s summer fund raiser, and the traffic congestion caused by a moose’s sudden appearance on the edge of town, these murders were sensational and shocking.

Now Nielsen’s defense lawyer is trying to suppress the confession he made soon after the killing, on the grounds that Nielsen’s lawyer wasn’t present during the interrogation. Nielsen waived his rights to an attorney, according to the transcripts, but since his defense rests on “mental disease or defect,” his defense team argues that he did not have the capacity to do so. It’s a bit of a catch-22.

I’m neither a lawyer, nor do I play one on television, so I can’t really comment on the validity of the argument. It’s the sort of thing I’d expect a defense lawyer to do–I’d certainly want mine to play this card if I were in the same spot–but I’d be surprised if it was an unqualified success.

What would be more interesting, would be an attempt to exculpate Nielsen on the basis of his reading habits. According to the story:

Nielsen sounded calm and laughed occasionally as [Detective Jennifer] King asked him about his work and his hobbies. He said he attended the University of Maine at Farmington for a while before he started working as a restaurant cook. He said he enjoys reading fiction and writing when he can, and that his favorite author is the poet Emily Dickinson.

Of course, Mark Chapman was a fan of Catcher in the Rye, and Nixon enjoyed Tolstoy. Perhaps the most that can be said from this little tidbit of information is that some writers are so good that it takes no especial moral sense to recognize their greatness. (We won’t start down the dark and weedy path of morality and aesthetics; I was up too late watching fireworks to think especially deep thoughts today…)