Poetessa, nato venerdì 10 dicembre 1830 a Amherst, Massachusetts (USA - Stati Uniti d'America), morto sabato 15 maggio 1886 a Amherst, Massachusetts (USA - Stati Uniti d'America)
No man saw awe, nor to his house Admitted he a man Though by his awful residence Has human nature been - Not deeming of his dread abode - Till laboring to flee A grasp on comprehension laid Detained vitality.
Returning is a different route The Spirit could not show For breathing is the only work To be enacted now.
"Am not consumed", old Moses wrote, "Yet saw him face to face" - That very physiognomy I am convinced was this.
My life closed twice before it's close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.
Love can do all but raise the Dead I doubt if even that From such a giant were withheld Were flesh equivalent But love is tired and must sleep, And hungry and must graze And so abets the shining Fleet Till it is out of gaze.
"Lethe" in my flower, Of which they who drink, In the fadeless Orchards Hear the bobolink! Merely flake or petal As the Eye beholds Jupiter! My father! I perceive the rose!
I've got an arrow here. Loving the hand that sent it I the dart revere. Fell, they will say, in "skirmish"! Vanquished, my soul will know By but a simple arrow Sped by an archer's bow.
If ever the lid gets off my head And lets the brain away The fellow will go where he belonged - Without a hint from me, And the world - if the world be looking on - Will see how far from home It is possible for sense to live The soul there - all the time.
If all the griefs I am to have Would only come today, I am so happy I believe They'd laugh and run away. If all the joys I am to have Would only come today, They could not be so big as this That happens to me now.
I took one Draught of Life - I'll tell you what I paid - Precisely an existence - The market price, they said. They weighed me, Dust by Dust - They balanced Film with Film, Then handed me my Being's worth - A single Dram of Heaven!
How dare the robins sing, When men and women hear Who since they went to their account Have settled with the year! - Paid all that life had earned In one consummate bill. And now, what life or death can do Is immaterial. Insulting is the sun To him whose mortal light Beguiled of immortality Bequeath him to the night. Extinct be every hum In deference to him Whose garden wrestled with the dew, At daybreak overcome!
High from the earth I heard a bird; He trod upon the trees As he esteemed them trifles, And then he spied a breeze, And situated softly Upon a pile of wind Which in a perturbation Nature had left behind. A joyous going fellow I gathered from his talk Which both of benediction And badinage partook Without apparent burden. I subsequently learned He was the faithful father Of a dependent brood. And this untoward transport His remedy for care, - A contrast to our respites. How different we are!