Ode to a Butterfly

THOU spark of life that wavest wings of gold,

Thou songless wanderer mid the songful birds,

With Nature's secrets in thy tints unrolled

Through gorgeous cipher, past the reach of words,

Yet dear to every child

In glad pursuit beguiled,

Living his unspoiled days mid flowers and flocks and herds!

Thou winged blossom, liberated thing,

What secret tie binds thee to other flowers,

Still held within the garden's fostering?

Will they too soar with the completed hours,

Take flight, and be like thee

Irrevocably free,

Hovering at will o'er their parental bowers?

Or is thy lustre drawn from heavenly hues,--

A sumptuous drifting fragment of the sky,

Caught when the sunset its last glance imbues

With sudden splendor, and the tree-tops high

Grasp that swift blazonry,

Then lend those tints to thee,

On thee to float a few short hours, and die?

Birds have their nests; they rear their eager young,

And flit on errands all the livelong day;

Each fieldmouse keeps the homestead whence it sprung;

Burt thou art Nature's freeman,--free to stray

Unfettered through the wood,

Seeking thine airy food,

The sweetness spiced on every blossomed spray.

The garden one wide banquet spreads for thee,

O daintiest reveller of the joyous earth!

One drop of honey gives satiety;

A second draught would drug thee past all mirth.

Thy feast no orgy shows;

Thy calm eyes never close,

Thou soberest sprite to which the sun gives birth.

And yet the soul of man upon thy wings

Forever soars in aspiration; thou

His emblem of the new career that springs

When death's arrest bids all his spirit bow.

He seeks his hope in thee

Of immortality.

Symbol of life, me with such faith endow!

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

To Duty

LIGHT of dim mornings; shield from heat and cold;

Balm for all ailments; substitute for praise;

Comrade of those who plod in lonely ways

(Ways that grow lonelier as the years wax old);

Tonic for fears; check to the over-bold;

Nurse, whose calm hand its strong restriction lays,

Kind but resistless, on our wayward days;

Mart, where high wisdom at vast price is sold;

Gardener, whose touch bids the rose-petals fall,

The thorns endure; surgeon, who human hearts

Searchest with probes, though the death-touch be given;

Spell that knits friends, but yearning lovers parts;

Tyrant relentless o'er our blisses all;--

Oh, can it be, thine other name is Heaven?

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"The Snowing of the Pines"

SOFTER than silence, stiller than still air

Float down from high pine-boughs the slender leaves.

The forest floor its annual boon receives

That comes like snowfall, tireless, tranquil, fair.

Gently they glide, gently they clothe the bare

Old rocks with grace. Their fall a mantle weaves

Of paler yellow than autumnal sheaves

Or those strange blossoms the witch-hazels wear.

Athwart long aisles the sunbeams pierce their way;

High up, the crows are gathering for the night;

The delicate needles fill the air; the jay

Takes through their golden mist his radiant flight;

They fall and fall, till at November's close

The snow-flakes drop as lightly--snows on snows.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Decoration

Manibus O Date Lilia Plenis

[Ed. Note: The epigraph is from Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI;

it means "O give handfuls of lilies." The woman is Higginson's

first wife, who died after a long and painful illness.]

MID the flower-wreathed tombs I stand

Bearing lilies in my hand.

Comrades! in what soldier-grave

Sleeps the bravest of the brave?

Is is he who sank to rest

With his colors round his breast?

Friendship makes his tomb a shrine;

Garlands veil it: ask not mine.

One low grave, yon trees beneath,

Bears no roses, wears no wreath;

Yet no heart more high and warm

Ever dared the battle-storm.

Never gleamed a prouder eye

In the front of victory,

Never foot had firmer tread

On the field where hope lay dead,

Than are hid within this tomb,

Where the untended grasses bloom,

And no stone, with feigned distress,

Mocks the sacred loneliness.

Youth and beauty, dauntless will,

Dreams that life could ne'er fulfill,

Here lie buried; here in peace

Wrongs and woes have found release.

Turning from my comrades' eyes,

Kneeling where a woman lies,

I strew lilies on the grave

Of the bravest of the brave.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made Of"

[Ed. Note: Higgonson's title is a misquotation of Shakespeare's

The Tempest, IV, i, 156-157: "We are such stuff/ As dreams

are made on. . . ."]

NOW all the cloudy shapes that float and lie

Within this magic globe we call the brain

Fold quite away, condense, withdraw, refrain,

And show it tenantless--an empty sky.

Return, O parting visions, pass not by;

Nor leave me vacant still, with strivings vain,

Longing to grasp at your dim garment's train,

And be drawn on to sleep's immunity.

I lie and pray for fancies hovering near;

Oblivion's kindly troop, illusions blest;

Dim, trailing phantoms in a world too clear;

Soft, downy, shadowy forms, my spirit's nest;

The warp and woof of sleep; till, freed from fear,

I drift in sweet enchantment back to rest.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson