The grass divides as with a comb-- A spotted shaft is seen-- And then it closes at your feet And opens further on-- He likes a boggy acre A Floor too cool for Corn-- Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot-- I more than once, at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash Unbraiding in the sun When stooping to secure it It wrinkled, and was gone--
Several of Nature's People I know, and they know me-- I feel for them a transport Of cordiality--
But never met this Fellow Attended, or alone Without a tighter breathing And Zero at the Bone--
----
Apparently with no surprise To any happy Flower The Frost beheads it at its play-- In accidental power-- The blonde Assassin passes on-- The Sun proceeds unmoved To measure off another Day For an Approving God.
-----
A Bird came down the Walk-- He did not know I saw-- He bit an Angleworm in halves And ate the fellow, raw,
And then he drank a Dew
>From a convenient Grass--
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a beetle pass--
He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all around-- They looked like frightened Beads, I thought-- He stirred his Velvet Head
Like one in danger, Cautious, I offered him a Crumb And he unrolled his feathers And rowed him softer home--
Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam-- Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless as they swim.
John Flstiner, in a fine article in the March/April American Poetry Review, notes the ambiguity of the space between stanzas 3 & 4: does it run on, or does "Like one in danger" start anew? "Is the Bird or the speaker 'in danger, Cautious'?"