For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it and from it? Thou, soul, unloosen’d⁠—the restlessness after I know not what; Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away! O if one could but fly like a bird! O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship! To glide with thee O soul, o’er all, in all, as a ship o’er the waters; Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the morning drops of dew, The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves, Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence, Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere, To grace the bush I love⁠—to sing with the birds, A warble for joy of lilac-time, returning in reminiscence.

( G. P. , Buried 1870)

What may we chant, O thou within this tomb? What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionaire? The life thou lived’st we know not, But that thou walk’dst thy years in barter, ’mid the haunts of brokers, Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory.

Silent, my soul, With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder’d, Turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes.

While through the interior vistas, Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night Auroras of the north,) Lambent tableaus, prophetic, bodiless scenes, Spiritual projections.