St. Valentine’s 1852 by Emily Dickinson

“Sic transit gloria mundi,”
“How doth the busy bee,”
“Dum vivimus vivamus,”
I stay mine enemy!

Oh “veni, vidi, vici!”
Oh caput cap-a-pie!
And oh “memento mori”
When I am far from thee!

Hurrah for Peter Parley!
Hurrah for Daniel Boone!
Three cheers, sir, for the gentleman
Who first observed the moon!

Peter, put up the sunshine;
Patti, arrange the stars;
Tell Luna, tea is waiting,
And call your brother Mars!

Put down the apple, Adam,
And come away with me,
So shalt thou have a pippin
From off my father’s tree!

I climb the “Hill of Science,”
I “view the landscape o’er;”
Such transcendental prospect,
I ne’er beheld before!

Unto the Legislature
My country bids me go;
I’ll take my india rubbers,
In case the wind should blow!

During my education,
It was announced to me
That gravitation, stumbling,
Fell from an apple tree!

The earth upon an axis
Was once supposed to turn,
By way of a gymnastic
In honor of the sun!

It was the brave Columbus,
A sailing o’er the tide,
Who notified the nations
Of where I would reside!

Mortality is fatal –
Gentility is fine,
Rascality, heroic,
Insolvency, sublime!

Our Fathers being weary,
Laid down on Bunker Hill;
And tho’ full many a morning,
Yet they are sleeping still, –

The trumpet, sir, shall wake them,
In dreams I see them rise,
Each with a solemn musket
A marching to the skies!

A coward will remain, Sir,
Until the fight is done;
But an immortal hero
Will take his hat, and run!

Good bye, Sir, I am going;
My country calleth me;
Allow me, Sir, at parting,
To wipe my weeping e’e.

In token of our friendship
Accept this “Bonnie Doon,”
And when the hand that plucked it
Hath passed beyond the moon,

The memory of my ashes
Will consolation be
Then, farewell, Tuscarora,
And farewell, Sir, to thee!

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Different by Dennis Lange

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I’d like a different sky before I die
The southern cross, the magic northern lights,
A tropic moon through palm trees, like a pie,
The jagged blue left by Mt. Everest’s bites.

And from a distance, on the Kansas plain,
I’d like to see a rope descend and swell.
And somewhere in the Rocky Mountain chain
Sit watching while a blizzard works its spell.

I’d like a different path before I die –
Boone-blazed, through Wilderness, his road;
Or tread where elephants against the sky
Crossed Alps with Hannibal their brazen load;

Or march scorched earth – Atlanta to the sea
Where Sherman and his locusts laid all waste;
And contrast that with Paul’s first ministry
Till all his journey I have then retraced.

A different place to stand before I die
Would let me see the world through others’ eyes –
Where first Balboa did Pacific spy,
Where Cook stood looking at his North Pole prize.

I’d like to stand, considering man’s fate
Where Jesus wept o’er doomed Jerusalem;
And look to Earth, and heaven contemplate
From where stood Armstrong on his podium.

I’d like a different me before I die
A little less of all that’s cold and hard,
A serving more of love and humble pie,
A softer me that’s nothing like a shard.

In living then, I must be on my way;
I have no certain schedule like a train.
Tomorrow is not promised, just today.
The now of Time as king will ever reign.

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© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2016.

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