Emily Dickinson

“ We envy the despair
That devastated childhood's realm,
So easy to repair.
II. LOVE. I. CONSECRATION. Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,
Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,
Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,
Not to partake thy passion, my humility. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The moon was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.
Her forehead is of amplest blond;
Her cheek like beryl stone;
Her eye unto the summer dew
The likest I have known.
Her lips of amber never part;
But what must be the smile
Upon her friend she could bestow
Were such her silver will!
And what a privilege to be
But the remotest star!
For certainly her way might pass
Beside your twinkling door.
Her bonnet is the firmament,
The universe her shoe,
The stars the trinkets at her belt,
Her dimities of blue. ”

“ A clock stopped — not the mantel's;
Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing
That just now dangled still.
An awe came on the trinket!
The figures hunched with pain,
Then quivered out of decimals
Into degreeless noon.
It will not stir for doctors,
This pendulum of snow;
The shopman importunes it,
While cool, concernless No
Nods from the gilded pointers,
Nods from the seconds slim,
Decades of arrogance between
The dial life and him. ”

“ The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside. ”

“ 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! ”

“ They say that 'time assuages,' —
Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
As sinews do, with age.
Time is a test of trouble,
But not a remedy.
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no malady. ”

“ I sing to use the waiting,
My bonnet but to tie,
And shut the door unto my house;
No more to do have I,
Till, his best step approaching,
We journey to the day,
And tell each other how we sang
To keep the dark away. ”

“ He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,
Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow
Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool, —
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul. ”

“ 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! ”

“ The distance that the dead have gone
Does not at first appear;
Their coming back seems possible
For many an ardent year.
And then, that we have followed them
We more than half suspect,
So intimate have we become
With their dear retrospect. ”

“ MABEL LOOMIS TODD It's all I have to bring to-day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, —
Some one the sum could tell, —
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell. ”

“ This was in the white of the year,
That was in the green,
Drifts were as difficult then to think
As daisies now to be seen.
Looking back is best that is left,
Or if it be before,
Retrospection is prospect's half,
Sometimes almost more. ”

“ So proud she was to die
It made us all ashamed
That what we cherished, so unknown
To her desire seemed.
So satisfied to go
Where none of us should be,
Immediately, that anguish stooped
Almost to jealousy. ”

“ Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides. ”

“ Bless God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast;
Grant, God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest.
Please God, might I behold him
In epauletted white,
I should not fear the foe then,
I should not fear the fight. ”

“ The past is such a curious creature,
To look her in the face
A transport may reward us,
Or a disgrace. ”

“ Not with a club the heart is broken,
Nor with a stone;
A whip, so small you could not see it.
I've known
To lash the magic creature ”

“ The soul should always stand ajar,
That if the heaven inquire,
He will not be obliged to wait,
Or shy of troubling her. ”

“ That such have died enables us
The tranquiller to die;
That such have lived, certificate
For immortality. ”

“ We never know we go, — when we are going
We jest and shut the door;
Fate following behind us bolts it,
And we accost no more. ”

“ Why joys so scantily disburse,
Why Paradise defer,
Why floods are served to us in bowls, —
I speculate no more. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Split the lark and you'll find the music,
Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled,
Scantily dealt to the summer morning,
Saved for your ear when lutes be old. ”

“ Let me not mar that perfect dream
By an auroral stain,
But so adjust my daily night
That it will come again. ”

“ Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door; ”

“ 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. ”

“ Because the winds would find it out,
And tell your cedar floor. ”

“ PREFACE. The intellectual activity of Emily Dickinson was so great that a large and characteristic choice is still possible among her literary material, and this third volume of her verses is put forth in response to the repeated wish of the admirers of her peculiar genius. ”

“ To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, —
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few. ”

“ There is internal evidence that many of the poems were simply spontaneous flashes of insight, apparently unrelated to outward circumstance. Others, however, had an obvious personal origin; for example, the verses "I had a Guinea golden," which seem to have been sent to some friend travelling in Europe, as a dainty reminder of letter-writing delinquencies. The surroundings in which any of Emily Dickinson's verses are known to have been written usually serve to explain them clearly ”

“ Much of Emily Dickinson's prose was rhythmic, —even rhymed, though frequently not set apart in lines.
Also many verses, written as such, were sent to friends in letters; these were published in 1894, in the volumes of her Letters. It has not been necessary, however, to include them in this Series, and all have been omitted, except three or four exceptionally strong ones, as "A Book," and "With Flowers." ”