It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy - a condition with which the cynicism of human nature so cordially complies, one could wish it were a concurrence upon a subject more noble.
You are out of the way of temptation and out of the way of the tempter - I didn't mean to make you wicked - but I was - and am - and shall be - and I was with you so much that I couldn't help contaminate.
A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period -
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.
It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.
Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay -
A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.
As Summer into Autumn slips
And yet we sooner say
"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest
We turn the sun away,
And almost count it an Affront
The presence to concede
Of one however lovely, not
The one that we have loved -
So we evade the charge of Years
On one attempting shy
The Circumvention of the Shaft
Of Life's Declivity.
She dealt her pretty words like Blades -- How glittering they shone -- And every One unbared a Nerve Or wantoned with a Bone -- She never deemed -- she hurt -- That -- is not Steel's Affair -- A vulgar grimace in the Flesh -- How ill the Creatures bear -- To Ache is human -- not polite -- The Film upon the eye Mortality's old Custom -- Just locking up -- to Die.
How odd that girl's life looks Behind this soft eclipse! I think that earth seems so To those in heaven now. This being comfort, then That other kind was pain; But why compare? I'm wife! stop there!