AN ENIGMA

“Seldom we find,” says Solomon Don Dunce,

“Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.

Through all the flimsy things we see at once

As easily as through a Naples bonnet—

Trash of all trash!—how _can_ a lady don it?

Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff-

Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff

Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it.”

And, veritably, Sol is right enough.

The general tuckermanities are arrant

Bubbles—ephemeral and _so_ transparent—

But _this_ is, now,—you may depend upon it—

Stable, opaque, immortal—all by dint

Of the dear names that lie concealed within ‘t.

1847. TO MY MOTHER

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,

The angels, whispering to one another,

Can find, among their burning terms of love,

None so devotional as that of “Mother,”

Therefore by that dear name I long have called you—

You who are more than mother unto me,

And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you

In setting my Virginia’s spirit free.

My mother—my own mother, who died early,

Was but the mother of myself; but you

Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,

And thus are dearer than the mother I knew

By that infinity with which my wife

Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

1849.

[The above was addressed to the poet’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm—Ed.]