Poems by Emily Dickinson
Book I.
Life.
- 'T is little I could care for pearls
- Who own the ample sea;
- Or brooches, when the Emperor
- With rubies pelteth me;
- Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines;
- Or diamonds, when I see
- A diadem to fit a dome
- Continual crowning me.
- Superiority to fate
- Is difficult to learn.
- 'T is not conferred by any,
- But possible to earn
- A pittance at a time,
- Until, to her surprise,
- The soul with strict economy
- Subsists till Paradise.
- Hope is a subtle glutton;
- He feeds upon the fair;
- And yet, inspected closely,
- What abstinence is there!
- His is the halcyon table
- That never seats but one,
- And whatsoever is consumed
- The same amounts remain.
I.
- Forbidden fruit a flavor has
- That lawful orchards mocks;
- How luscious lies the pea within
- The pod that Duty locks!
II.
- Heaven is what I cannot reach!
- The apple on the tree,
- Provided it do hopeless hang,
- That 'heaven' is, to me.
- The color on the cruising cloud,
- The interdicted ground
- Behind the hill, the house behind,--
- There Paradise is found!
- A word is dead
- When it is said,
- Some say.
- I say it just
- Begins to live
- That day.
- To venerate the simple days
- Which lead the seasons by,
- Needs but to remember
- That from you or me
- They may take the trifle
- Termed mortality!
- To invest existence with a stately air,
- Needs but to remember
- That the acorn there
- Is the egg of forests
- For the upper air!
- It 's such a little thing to weep,
- So short a thing to sigh;
- And yet by trades the size of these
- We men and women die!
- Drowning is not so pitiful
- As the attempt to rise.
- Three times, 't is said, a sinking man
- Comes up to face the skies,
- And then declines forever
- To that abhorred abode
- Where hope and he part company,--
- For he is grasped of God.
- The Maker's cordial visage,
- However good to see,
- Is shunned, we must admit it,
- Like an adversity.
- How still the bells in steeples stand,
- Till, swollen with the sky,
- They leap upon their silver feet
- In frantic melody!
- If the foolish call them 'flowers,'
- Need the wiser tell?
- If the savans 'classify' them,
- It is just as well!
- Those who read the Revelations
- Must not criticise
- Those who read the same edition
- With beclouded eyes!
- Could we stand with that old Moses
- Canaan denied,--
- Scan, like him, the stately landscape
- On the other side,--
- Doubtless we should deem superfluous
- Many sciences
- Not pursued by learnèd angels
- In scholastic skies!
- Low amid that glad Belles lettres
- Grant that we may stand,
- Stars, amid profound Galaxies,
- At that grand 'Right hand'!
- Could mortal lip divine
- The undeveloped freight
- Of a delivered syllable,
- 'T would crumble with the weight.
- My life closed twice before its close;
- It yet remains to see
- If Immortality unveil
- A third event to me,
- So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
- As these that twice befell.
- Parting is all we know of heaven,
- And all we need of hell.
- We never know how high we are
- Till we are called to rise;
- And then, if we are true to plan,
- Our statures touch the skies.
- The heroism we recite
- Would be a daily thing,
- Did not ourselves the cubits warp
- For fear to be a king.
- While I was fearing it, it came,
- But came with less of fear,
- Because that fearing it so long
- Had almost made it dear.
- There is a fitting a dismay,
- A fitting a despair.
- 'T is harder knowing it is due,
- Than knowing it is here.
- The trying on the utmost,
- The morning it is new,
- Is terribler than wearing it
- A whole existence through.
- There is no frigate like a book
- To take us lands away,
- Nor any coursers like a page
- Of prancing poetry.
- This traverse may the poorest take
- Without oppress of toll;
- How frugal is the chariot
- That bears a human soul!
- Who has not found the heaven below
- Will fail of it above.
- God's residence is next to mine,
- His furniture is love.
- A face devoid of love or grace,
- A hateful, hard, successful face,
- A face with which a stone
- Would feel as thoroughly at ease
- As were they old acquaintances,--
- First time together thrown.
- I had a guinea golden;
- I lost it in the sand,
- And though the sum was simple,
- And pounds were in the land,
- Still had it such a value
- Unto my frugal eye,
- That when I could not find it
- I sat me down to sigh.
- I had a crimson robin
- Who sang full many a day,
- But when the woods were painted
- He, too, did fly away.
- Time brought me other robins,--
- Their ballads were the same,--
- Still for my missing troubadour
- I kept the 'house at hame.'
- I had a star in heaven;
- One Pleiad was its name,
- And when I was not heeding
- It wandered from the same.
- And though the skies are crowded,
- And all the night ashine,
- I do not care about it,
- Since none of them are mine.
- My story has a moral:
- I have a missing friend,--
- Pleiad its name, and robin,
- And guinea in the sand,--
- And when this mournful ditty,
- Accompanied with tear,
- Shall meet the eye of traitor
- In country far from here,
- Grant that repentance solemn
- May seize upon his mind,
- And he no consolation
- Beneath the sun may find.
- Note.--This poem may have had, like many others, a personal origin. It is more than probable that it was sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty reminder of letter-writing delinquencies.
- From all the jails the boys and girls
- Ecstatically leap,--
- Beloved, only afternoon
- That prison does n't keep.
- They storm the earth and stun the air,
- A mob of solid bliss.
- Alas! that frowns could lie in wait
- For such a foe as this!
- Few get enough,--enough is one;
- To that ethereal throng
- Have not each one of us the right
- To stealthily belong?
- Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
- Too sullied for the hell
- To which the law entitled him.
- As nature's curtain fell
- The one who bore him tottered in,
- For this was woman's son.
- ''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped;
- Oh, what a livid boon!
- I felt a clearing in my mind
- As if my brain had split;
- I tried to match it, seam by seam,
- But could not make them fit.
- The thought behind I strove to join
- Unto the thought before,
- But sequence ravelled out of reach
- Like balls upon a floor.
- The reticent volcano keeps
- His never slumbering plan;
- Confided are his projects pink
- To no precarious man.
- If nature will not tell the tale
- Jehovah told to her,
- Can human nature not survive
- Without a listener?
- Admonished by her buckled lips
- Let every babbler be.
- The only secret people keep
- Is Immortality.
- If recollecting were forgetting,
- Then I remember not;
- And if forgetting, recollecting,
- How near I had forgot!
- And if to miss were merry,
- And if to mourn were gay,
- How very blithe the fingers
- That gathered these to-day!
- The farthest thunder that I heard
- Was nearer than the sky,
- And rumbles still, though torrid noons
- Have lain their missiles by.
- The lightning that preceded it
- Struck no one but myself,
- But I would not exchange the bolt
- For all the rest of life.
- Indebtedness to oxygen
- The chemist may repay,
- But not the obligation
- To electricity.
- It founds the homes and decks the days,
- And every clamor bright
- Is but the gleam concomitant
- Of that waylaying light.
- The thought is quiet as a flake,--
- A crash without a sound;
- How life's reverberation
- Its explanation found!
- On the bleakness of my lot
- Bloom I strove to raise.
- Late, my acre of a rock
- Yielded grape and maize.
- Soil of flint if steadfast tilled
- Will reward the hand;
- Seed of palm by Lybian sun
- Fructified in sand.
- A door just opened on a street--
- I, lost, was passing by--
- And instant's width of warmth disclosed,
- And wealth, and company.
- The door as sudden shut, and I,
- I, lost, was passing by,--
- Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
- Enlightening misery.
- Are friends delight or pain?
- Could bounty but remain
- Riches were good.
- But if they only stay
- Bolder to fly away,
- Riches are sad.
- Ashes denote that fire was;
- Respect the grayest pile
- For the departed creature's sake
- That hovered there awhile.
- Fire exists the first in light,
- And then consolidates,--
- Only the chemist can disclose
- Into what carbonates.
- Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
- She felled--he did not fall--
- Impaled him on her fiercest stakes--
- He neutralized them all.
- She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
- But, when her worst was done,
- And he, unmoved, regarded her,
- Acknowledged him a man.
- Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
- For the one ship that struts the shore
- Many 's the gallant, overwhelmed creature
- Nodding in navies nevermore.
- I measure every grief I meet
- With analytic eyes;
- I wonder if it weighs like mine,
- Or has an easier size.
- I wonder if they bore it long,
- Or did it just begin?
- I could not tell the date of mine,
- It feels so old a pain.
- I wonder if it hurts to live,
- And if they have to try,
- And whether, could they choose between,
- They would not rather die.
- I wonder if when years have piled--
- Some thousands--on the cause
- Of early hurt, if such a lapse
- Could give them any pause;
- Or would they go on aching still
- Through centuries above,
- Enlightened to a larger pain
- By contrast with the love.
- The grieved are many, I am told;
- The reason deeper lies,--
- Death is but one and comes but once,
- And only nails the eyes.
- There 's grief of want, and grief of cold,--
- A sort they call 'despair;'
- There 's banishment from native eyes,
- In sight of native air.
- And though I may not guess the kind
- Correctly, yet to me
- A piercing comfort it affords
- In passing Calvary,
- To note the fashions of the cross,
- Of those that stand alone,
- Still fascinated to presume
- That some are like my own.
- I have a king who does not speak;
- So, wondering, thro' the hours meek
- I trudge the day away,--
- Half glad when it is night and sleep,
- If, haply, thro' a dream to peep
- In parlors shut by day.
- And if I do, when morning comes,
- It is as if a hundred drums
- Did round my pillow roll,
- And shouts fill all my childish sky,
- And bells keep saying 'victory'
- From steeples in my soul!
- And if I don't, the little Bird
- Within the Orchard is not heard,
- And I omit to pray,
- 'Father, thy will be done' to-day,
- For my will goes the other way,
- And it were perjury!
- It dropped so low in my regard
- I heard it hit the ground,
- And go to pieces on the stones
- At bottom of my mind;
- Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less
- Than I reviled myself
- For entertaining plated wares
- Upon my silver shelf.
- To lose one's faith surpasses
- The loss of an estate,
- Because estates can be
- Replenished,--faith cannot.
- Inherited with life,
- Belief but once can be;
- Annihilate a single clause,
- And Being's beggary.
- I had a daily bliss
- I half indifferent viewed,
- Till sudden I perceived it stir,--
- It grew as I pursued,
- Till when, around a crag,
- It wasted from my sight,
- Enlarged beyond my utmost scope,
- I learned its sweetness right.
- I worked for chaff, and earning wheat
- Was haughty and betrayed.
- What right had fields to arbitrate
- In matters ratified?
- I tasted wheat,--and hated chaff,
- And thanked the ample friend;
- Wisdom is more becoming viewed
- At distance than at hand.
- Life, and Death, and Giants
- Such as these, are still.
- Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill,
- Beetle at the candle,
- Or a fife's small fame,
- Maintain by accident
- That they proclaim.
- Our lives are Swiss,--
- So still, so cool,
- Till, some odd afternoon,
- The Alps neglect their curtains,
- And we look farther on.
- Italy stands the other side,
- While, like a guard between,
- The solemn Alps,
- The siren Alps,
- Forever intervene!
- Remembrance has a rear and front,--
- 'T is something like a house;
- It has a garret also
- For refuse and the mouse,
- Besides, the deepest cellar
- That ever mason hewed;
- Look to it, by its fathoms
- Ourselves be not pursued.
- To hang our head ostensibly,
- And subsequent to find
- That such was not the posture
- Of our immortal mind,
- Affords the sly presumption
- That, in so dense a fuzz,
- You, too, take cobweb attitudes
- Upon a plane of gauze!
- The brain is wider than the sky,
- For, put them side by side,
- The one the other will include
- With ease, and you beside.
- The brain is deeper than the sea,
- For, hold them, blue to blue,
- The one the other will absorb,
- As sponges, buckets do.
- The brain is just the weight of God,
- For, lift them, pound for pound,
- And they will differ, if they do,
- As syllable from sound.
- The bone that has no marrow;
- What ultimate for that?
- It is not fit for table,
- For beggar, or for cat.
- A bone has obligations,
- A being has the same;
- A marrowless assembly
- Is culpabler than shame.
- But how shall finished creatures
- A function fresh obtain?--
- Old Nicodemus' phantom
- Confronting us again!
- The past is such a curious creature,
- To look her in the face
- A transport may reward us,
- Or a disgrace.
- Unarmed if any meet her,
- I charge him, fly!
- Her rusty ammunition
- Might yet reply!
- To help our bleaker parts
- Salubrious hours are given,
- Which if they do not fit for earth
- Drill silently for heaven.
- What soft, cherubic creatures
- These gentlewomen are!
- One would as soon assault a plush
- Or violate a star.
- Such dimity convictions,
- A horror so refined
- Of freckled human nature,
- Of Deity ashamed,--
- It 's such a common glory,
- A fisherman's degree!
- Redemption, brittle lady,
- Be so, ashamed of thee.
- Who never wanted,--maddest joy
- Remains to him unknown;
- The banquet of abstemiousness
- Surpasses that of wine.
- Within its hope, though yet ungrasped
- Desire's perfect goal,
- No nearer, lest reality
- Should disenthrall thy soul.
- It might be easier
- To fail with land in sight,
- Than gain my blue peninsula
- To perish of delight.
- You cannot put a fire out;
- A thing that can ignite
- Can go, itself, without a fan
- Upon the slowest night.
- You cannot fold a flood
- And put it in a drawer,--
- Because the winds would find it out,
- And tell your cedar floor.
- A modest lot, a fame petite,
- A brief campaign of sting and sweet
- Is plenty! Is enough!
- A sailor's business is the shore,
- A soldier's--balls. Who asketh more
- Must seek the neighboring life!
- Is bliss, then, such abyss
- I must not put my foot amiss
- For fear I spoil my shoe?
- I 'd rather suit my foot
- Than save my boot,
- For yet to buy another pair
- Is possible
- At any fair.
- But bliss is sold just once;
- The patent lost
- None buy it any more.
- I stepped from plank to plank
- So slow and cautiously;
- The stars about my head I felt,
- About my feet the sea.
- I knew not but the next
- Would be my final inch,--
- This gave me that precarious gait
- Some call experience.
- One day is there of the series
- Termed Thanksgiving day,
- Celebrated part at table,
- Part in memory.
- Neither patriarch nor pussy,
- I dissect the play;
- Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
- Reflex holiday.
- Had there been no sharp subtraction
- From the early sum,
- Not an acre or a caption
- Where was once a room,
- Not a mention, whose small pebble
- Wrinkled any bay,--
- Unto such, were such assembly,
- 'T were Thanksgiving day.
- Softened by Time's consummate plush,
- How sleek the woe appears
- That threatened childhood's citadel
- And undermined the years!
- Bisected now by bleaker griefs,
- We envy the despair
- That devastated childhood's realm,
- So easy to repair.
Dickinson, Emily. 1896. Poems.