Over gutters and over parking lots, over rooftops, fountains, cloudbanks and the bay, beyond the sun, beyond the medium that fills unoccupied space, beyond the confines of the known
universe, ghost, you slip out of me with the ease of a swimmer at one with the waves, furrowing the deep with a pleasure we can’t articulate
As the morning advanced the sun became bright and warm, cloudless, calm, serene. About nine an appearance very unusual began to demand our attention—a shower of cobwebs falling from very elevated regions, & continuing, without any interruption, till the close of the day . . . There is a natural occurrence to be met with upon the highest part of our down in hot summer days, and that is a loud audible humming of bees in the air, though not one insect is to be seen . . . In a district so diversified as this, so full of hollow vales and hanging woods, it is no wonder that echoes should abound. Many we have discovered that return a tunable ring of bells, or the melody of birds; but we were still at a loss for a polysyllabical, articulate echo, till a young gentleman, who had parted from his company in a summer walk, and was calling after them, stumbled upon a very curious one in a spot where it might least be expected . . . We procured a cuckoo, and cutting open the breastbone and exposing the intestines to sight, found the crop lying as mentioned above. This stomach was large and round, and stuffed hard, like a pincushion, with food, which upon nice examination, we found to consist of various insects, such as small scarabs, spiders, and dragon-flies; the last of which, as they were just emerging out of the aurelia state, we have seen cuckoos catching on the wing. Among this farrago also were to be seen maggots, and many seeds, which belonged either to gooseberries, currants, cranberries, or some such fruit . . .
(To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916) I Ay, it is fitting on this holiday, Commemorative of our soldier dead,
And before hell mouth; dry plain and two mountains; On the one mountain, a running form, and another In the turn of the hill; in hard steel The road like a slow screw’s thread, The angle almost imperceptible, so that the circuit seemed hardly to rise;
Think how many, by now, have escaped the world’s memory.
Think, how all his wandering is only thought. Having once tried to live in the quasi-stupor of sensation, now he picks his way through areas of spilth, seeking the least among infinite evils.
His hope: intermittent.
To a person so little conscious, what would it mean to die? Though he feels, true enough, death’s wither-clench. Thinking always of
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