Emily’s Garden

The cricket sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
Their seam the day upon.

The low grass loaded with the dew,
The twilight stood as strangers do
With hat in hand, polite and new,
To stay as if, or go.

A vastness, as a neighbor, came,—
A wisdom without face or name,
A peace, as hemispheres at home,—
And so the night became.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, -
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

Bring me the sunset in a cup --
Reckon the morning's flagons up
And say how many Dew --
Tell me how far the morning leaps --
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadth of blue!

Write me how many notes there be
In the new Robin's extasy [sic]1
Among astonished boughs --
How many trips the Tortoise makes --
How many cups the Bee partakes,
The Debauchee of Dews!

Also, Who laid the Rainbow's piers,
Also, Who leads the docile spheres
By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite --
Who counts the wampum of the night
To see that none is due?

Who built this little Alban House
And shut the windows down so close
My spirit cannot see?
Who'll let me out some gala day
With implements to fly away,
Passing Pomposity?