A toad can die of light!    Death is the common right    Of toads and men, —    Of earl and midge    The privilege.    Why swagger then?    The gnat’s supremacy    Is large as thine.

The wind begun to rock the grass    With threatening tunes and low, —    He flung a menace at the earth,    A menace at the sky.     The leaves unhooked…

    A throe upon the features    A hurry in the breath,    An ecstasy of parting    Denominated “Death,” —     An anguish at the mention,    Which, when to patience grown,    I ‘ve known…

A thought went up my mind to-day    That I have had before,    But did not finish, — some way back,    I could not fix the year,     Nor where…

  An awful tempest mashed the air,    The clouds were gaunt and few;    A black, as of a spectre’s cloak,    Hid heaven and earth from view.     The creatures chuckled…

   Could mortal lip divine    The undeveloped freight    Of a delivered syllable,    ‘T would crumble with the weight.

 Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,    Until we meet a snake;    ‘T is then we sigh for houses,    And our departure take    At that enthralling gallop    That only childhood…

 A sickness of this world it most occasions    When best men die;    A wishfulness their far condition    To occupy.     A chief indifference, as foreign    A world must be    Themselves forsake…

 A shady friend for torrid days    Is easier to find    Than one of higher temperature    For frigid hour of mind.     The vane a little to the east    Scares muslin…

 Some keep the Sabbath going to church;    I keep it staying at home,    With a bobolink for a chorister,    And an orchard for a dome.     Some keep the…