In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life!
The woman's cause is man's. They rise or sink Together. / Dwarf'd or godlike, bound or free; miserable, / How shall men grow? - Let her be / All that not harms distinctive womanhood.
The smell of violets, hidden in the green, Pour'd back into my empty soul and frame The times when I remembered to have been Joyful and free from blame.
O Blackbird! sing me something well: While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may'st warble, eat and dwell.
Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
It sound of funeral or of marriage bells.
Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens? If all the world were falcons, what of that? The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the eagle.