GLEE! the great storm is over!
Four have recovered the land;
Forty gone down together,
Into the boiling sand.

Ring, for the scant salvation!
Toll, for the bonnie souls,
Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
Spinning upon the shoals!

How they will tell the shipwreck,
When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, “But the forty?
Did they come back no more?”.

Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller’s eye;
And the children no further question,
And only the waves reply.

’T IS so much joy! ’T is so much joy!
If I should fail, what poverty!
And yet, as poor as I,
Have ventured all upon a throw;
Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so,
This side the victory!

Life is but life, and death but death!
Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!
And if, indeed, I fail,
At least to know the worst is sweet.

Defeat means nothing but defeat,
No drearier can prevail!
And if I gain,oh, gun at sea,
Oh, bells that in the steeples be,
At first repeat it slow!
For heaven is a different thing,
Conjectured, and waked sudden in,
And might o’erwhelm me so!

SOUL, wilt thou toss again?
By just such a hazard,
Hundreds have lost, indeed,
But tens have won an all.

Angels breathless ballot,
Lingers to record thee;
Imps in eager caucus,
Raffle for my soul.

OUR share of night to bear,
Our share of morning,
Our blank in bliss to fill,
Our blank in scorning.

Here a star, and there a star,
Some lose their way.
Here a mist, and there a mist,
Afterwards—day!

SUCCESS is counted sweetest,
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar,
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host,
Who took the flag to-day,
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory.

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear,
The distant strains of triumph,
Break, agonized and clear.

Burn myself to the core and the fullest,
I burn myself to darkness and to char.
And yet I remain a flame of few secs,
An honest remembrance of light afar.

Share myself with the wick of a candle,
As light it must to flame and for long.
The pain of death impossible to handle,
Wish, it was in my power to prolong.

Flame, no a mere spark I am,
For an instance I stay and shut for life.
Flicker away to the past I can,
Like waves that rise offshore and die.

So who am I, a splinter or a spark?
Am I an illusion to the dark?

Wedding Poems