IN THE GARDEN.

A bird came down the walk: He did not know I saw; He bit an angle-worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew From a convenient gra.s.s, And then hopped sidewise to the wall To let a beetle pa.s.s.

He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all abroad, -- They looked like frightened beads, I thought; He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious, I offered him a crumb, And he unrolled his feathers And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or b.u.t.terflies, off banks of noon, Leap, plashless, as they swim.

XXIV.

THE SNAKE.

A narrow fellow in the gra.s.s Occasionally rides; You may have met him, -- did you not, His notice sudden is.

The gra.s.s divides as with a comb, A spotted shaft is seen; And then it closes at your feet And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre, A floor too cool for corn.

Yet when a child, and barefoot, I more than once, at morn,

Have pa.s.sed, I thought, a whip-lash Unbraiding in the sun, -- When, stooping to secure it, It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people I know, and they know me; I feel for them a transport Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow, Attended or alone, Without a tighter breathing, And zero at the bone.

XXV.

THE MUSHROOM.

The mushroom is the elf of plants, At evening it is not; At morning in a truffled hut It stops upon a spot

As if it tarried always; And yet its whole career Is shorter than a snake's delay, And fleeter than a tare.

'T is vegetation's juggler, The germ of alibi; Doth like a bubble antedate, And like a bubble hie.

I feel as if the gra.s.s were pleased To have it intermit; The surrept.i.tious scion Of summer's circ.u.mspect.

Had nature any outcast face, Could she a son contemn, Had nature an Iscariot, That mushroom, -- it is him.

XXVI.

THE STORM.

There came a wind like a bugle; It quivered through the gra.s.s, And a green chill upon the heat So ominous did pa.s.s We barred the windows and the doors As from an emerald ghost; The doom's electric moccason That very instant pa.s.sed.

On a strange mob of panting trees, And fences fled away, And rivers where the houses ran The living looked that day.

The bell within the steeple wild The flying tidings whirled.

How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the world!

XXVII.

THE SPIDER.

A spider sewed at night Without a light Upon an arc of white.

If ruff it was of dame Or shroud of gnome, Himself, himself inform.

Of immortality His strategy Was physiognomy.

XXVIII.

I know a place where summer strives With such a practised frost, She each year leads her daisies back, Recording briefly, "Lost."

But when the south wind stirs the pools And struggles in the lanes, Her heart misgives her for her vow, And she pours soft refrains

Into the lap of adamant, And spices, and the dew, That stiffens quietly to quartz, Upon her amber shoe.

XXIX.

The one that could repeat the summer day Were greater than itself, though he Minutest of mankind might be.

And who could reproduce the sun, At period of going down -- The lingering and the stain, I mean -- When Orient has been outgrown, And Occident becomes unknown, His name remain.