My cocoon tightens, colors tease,    I’m feeling for the air;    A dim capacity for wings    Degrades the dress I wear.     A power of butterfly must be    The aptitude to…

  God made a little gentian;    It tried to be a rose    And failed, and all the summer laughed.    But just before the snows    There came a purple creature    That ravished…

Are friends delight or pain?    Could bounty but remain    Riches were good.     But if they only stay    Bolder to fly away,    Riches are sad.

Frequently the woods are pink,    Frequently are brown;    Frequently the hills undress    Behind my native town.     Oft a head is crested    I was wont to see,    And as oft a…

There is a word    Which bears a sword    Can pierce an armed man.    It hurls its barbed syllables,–    At once is mute again.    But where it fell    The saved will tell    On…

Heaven is what I cannot reach!    The apple on the tree,    Provided it do hopeless hang,    That ‘heaven’ is, to me.     The color on the cruising cloud,    The interdicted…

Forbidden fruit a flavor has    That lawful orchards mocks;    How luscious lies the pea within    The pod that Duty locks!

I had no cause to be awake,    My best was gone to sleep,    And morn a new politeness took,    And failed to wake them up,     But called the…

Ashes denote that fire was;    Respect the grayest pile    For the departed creature’s sake    That hovered there awhile.     Fire exists the first in light,    And then consolidates, —    Only the…

 Few get enough, — enough is one;    To that ethereal throng    Have not each one of us the right    To stealthily belong?