id="id00193" style="margin-top: 5em">XLVII.

What soft, cherubic creatures
  These gentlewomen are!
One would as soon assault a plush
  Or violate a star.

Such dimity convictions,
  A horror so refined
Of freckled human nature,
  Of Deity ashamed, —

It's such a common glory,
  A fisherman's degree!
Redemption, brittle lady,
  Be so, ashamed of thee.

XLVIII.

DESIRE.

Who never wanted, — maddest joy
  Remains to him unknown:
The banquet of abstemiousness
  Surpasses that of wine.

Within its hope, though yet ungrasped
  Desire's perfect goal,
No nearer, lest reality
  Should disenthrall thy soul.

XLIX.

PHILOSOPHY.

It might be easier
  To fail with land in sight,
Than gain my blue peninsula
  To perish of delight.

L.

POWER.

You cannot put a fire out;
  A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
  Upon the slowest night.

You cannot fold a flood
  And put it in a drawer, —
Because the winds would find it out,
  And tell your cedar floor.

LI.

A modest lot, a fame petite,
  A brief campaign of sting and sweet
  Is plenty! Is enough!
A sailor's business is the shore,
  A soldier's — balls. Who asketh more
Must seek the neighboring life!

LII.

Is bliss, then, such abyss
I must not put my foot amiss
For fear I spoil my shoe?

I'd rather suit my foot
Than save my boot,
For yet to buy another pair
Is possible
At any fair.

But bliss is sold just once;
The patent lost
None buy it any more.

LIII.

EXPERIENCE.

I stepped from plank to plank
  So slow and cautiously;
The stars about my head I felt,
  About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next
  Would be my final inch, —
This gave me that precarious gait
  Some call experience.

LIV.

THANKSGIVING DAY.

One day is there of the series
  Termed Thanksgiving day,
Celebrated part at table,
  Part in memory.

Neither patriarch nor pussy,
  I dissect the play;
Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
  Reflex holiday.

Had there been no sharp subtraction
  From the early sum,
Not an acre or a caption
  Where was once a room,

Not a mention, whose small pebble
  Wrinkled any bay, —
Unto such, were such assembly,
  'T were Thanksgiving day.

LV.

CHILDISH GRIEFS.

Softened by Time's consummate plush,
  How sleek the woe appears
That threatened childhood's citadel
  And undermined the years!

Bisected now by bleaker griefs,
  We envy the despair
That devastated childhood's realm,
  So easy to repair.

II. LOVE.

I.

CONSECRATION.

Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,
  Proud of