My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun Read online

  Emily Dickinson

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  MY LIFE HAD STOOD A LOADED GUN

  Contents

  A wounded deer leaps highest

  A precious, mouldering pleasure ’tis

  To fight aloud is very brave

  The brain within its groove

  I’m nobody! Who are you?

  I can wade grief

  I like to see it lap the miles

  Is Heaven a physician?

  I took my power in my hand

  Before I got my eye put out

  Heart not so heavy as mine

  I know that he exists

  ’Tis little I could care for pearls

  I felt a cleavage in my mind

  The reticent volcano keeps

  One of the ones that Midas touched

  I dreaded that first robin so

  A route of evanescence

  Who robbed the woods

  The leaves, like women, interchange

  It sounded as if the streets were running

  The rat is the concisest tenant

  Where ships of purple gently toss

  Blazing in gold and quenching in purple

  There is a word

  He fumbles at your spirit

  Because I could not stop for Death

  Essential oils are wrung

  Death is like the insect

  Bereaved of all, I went abroad

  I felt a funeral in my brain

  Fame is a fickle food

  My Wheel is in the dark

  Summer begins to have the look

  To-day or this noon

  The Bible is an antique volume

  Candor, my tepid Friend

  On my volcano grows the grass

  Color, Caste, Denomination

  Doom is the House Without the Door

  I dwell in Possibility

  To intercept his yellow plan

  All the letters I can write

  It’s coming – the postponeless Creature

  My life had stood a loaded gun

  Good morning, Midnight!

  Longing is like the seed

  A toad can die of light!

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  EMILY DICKINSON

  Born 1830, Amherst, Massachusetts

  Died 1886, Amherst, Massachusetts

  This selection is taken from Complete Poems, Martin Secker, 1933.

  A wounded deer leaps highest,

  I’ve heard the hunter tell;

  ’Tis but the ecstasy of death,

  And then the brake is still.

  The smitten rock that gushes,

  The trampled steel that springs:

  A cheek is always redder

  Just where the hectic stings!

  Mirth is the mail of anguish,

  In which it caution arm,

  Lest anybody spy the blood

  And ‘You’re hurt’ exclaim!

  A precious, mouldering pleasure ’tis

  To meet an antique book,

  In just the dress his century wore;

  A privilege, I think,

  His venerable hand to take,

  And warming in our own,

  A passage back, or two, to make

  To times when he was young.

  His quaint opinions to inspect,

  His knowledge to unfold

  On what concerns our mutual mind,

  The literature of old;

  What interested scholars most,

  What competitions ran

  When Plato was a certainty,

  And Sophocles a man;

  When Sappho was a living girl,

  And Beatrice wore

  The gown that Dante deified.

  Facts, centuries before,

  He traverses familiar,

  As one should come to town

  And tell you all your dreams were true:

  He lived where dreams were born.

  His presence is enchantment,

  You beg him not to go;

  Old volumes shake their vellum heads

  And tantalize, just so.

  To fight aloud is very brave,

  But gallanter, I know,

  Who charge within the bosom,

  The cavalry of woe.

  Who win, and nations do not see,

  Who fall, and none observe,

  Whose dying eyes no country

  Regards with patriot love.

  We trust, in plumed procession,

  For such the angels go,

  Rank after rank, with even feet

  And uniforms of snow.

  The brain within its groove

  Runs evenly and true;

  But let a splinter swerve,

  ’Twere easier for you

  To put the water back

  When floods have slit the hills,

  And scooped a turnpike for themselves,

  And blotted out the mills!

  I’m nobody! Who are you?

  Are you nobody, too?

  Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!

  They’d banish us, you know.

  How dreary to be somebody!

  How public, like a frog

  To tell your name the livelong day

  To an admiring bog!

  I can wade grief,

  Whole pools of it, —

  I’m used to that.

  But the least push of joy

  Breaks up my feet,

  And I tip — drunken.

  Let no pebble smile,

  ’Twas the new liquor, —

  That was all!

  Power is only pain,

  Stranded, through discipline,

  Till weights will hang.

  Give balm to giants,

  And they’ll wilt, like men.

  Give Himmaleh, —

  They’ll carry him!

  I like to see it lap the miles,

  And lick the valleys up,

  And stop to feed itself at tanks;

  And then, prodigious, step

  Around a pile of mountains,

  And, supercilious, peer

  In shanties by the sides of roads;

  And then a quarry pare

  To fit its sides, and crawl between,

  Complaining all the while

  In horrid, hooting stanza;

  Then chase itself down hill

  And neigh like Boanerges;

  Then, punctual as a star,

  Stop — docile and omnipotent —

  At its own stable door.

  Is Heaven a physician?

  They say that He can heal;

  But medicine posthumous

  Is unavailable.

  Is Heaven an exchequer?

  They speak of what we owe;

  But that negotiation

  I’m not a party to.

  I took my power in my hand

  And went against the world;

  ’Twas not so much as David had,

  But I was twice as bold.

  I aimed my pebble, but myself

  Was all the one that fell.

  Was it Goliath was too large,

  Or only I too small?

  Before I got my eye put out,

  I liked as well to see

  As other creatures that have eyes,

  And know no other way.

  But were it told to me, to-day,

  That I might have the sky

  For mine, I tell you that my heart

  Would split, for size of me.

  The meadows mine, the mountains mine, —

  All forests, stintless stars,

  As much of noon as I could take

  Between my finite eyes.

  The motions of the dipping birds,


  The lightning’s jointed road,

  For mine to look at when I liked, —

  The news would strike me dead!

  So, safer, guess, with just my soul

  Upon the window-pane

  Where other creatures put their eyes,

  Incautious of the sun.

  Heart not so heavy as mine,

  Wending late home,

  As it passed my window

  Whistled itself a tune, —

  A careless snatch, a ballad,

  A ditty of the street;

  Yet to my irritated ear

  An anodyne so sweet,

  It was as if a bobolink,

  Sauntering this way,

  Carolled and mused and carolled,

  Then bubbled slow away.

  It was as if a chirping brook

  Upon a toilsome way

  Set bleeding feet to minuets

  Without the knowing why.

  To-morrow, night will come again,

  Weary, perhaps, and sore.

  Ah, bugle, by my window,

  I pray you stroll once more!

  I know that he exists

  Somewhere, in silence.

  He has hid his rare life

  From our gross eyes.

  ’Tis in instant’s play,

  ’Tis a fond ambush,

  Just to make bliss

  Earn her own surprise!

  But should the play

  Prove piercing earnest,

  Should the glee glaze

  In death’s stiff stare,

  Would not the fun

  Look too expensive?

  Would not the jest

  Have crawled too far?

  ’Tis 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.

  I felt a cleavage 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.

  One of the ones that Midas touched,

  Who failed to touch us all,

  Was that confiding prodigal,

  The blissful oriole.

  So drunk, he disavows it

  With badinage divine;

  So dazzling, we mistake him

  For an alighting mine.

  A pleader, a dissembler,

  An epicure, a thief, —

  Betimes an oratorio,

  An ecstasy in chief;

  The Jesuit of orchards,

  He cheats as he enchants

  Of an entire attar

  For his decamping wants.

  The splendor of a Burmah,

  The meteor of birds,

  Departing like a pageant

  Of ballads and of bards.

  I never thought that Jason sought

  For any golden fleece;

  But then I am a rural man,

  With thoughts that make for peace.

  But if there were a Jason,

  Tradition suffer me

  Behold his lost emolument

  Upon the apple-tree.

  I dreaded that first robin so,

  But he is mastered now,

  And I’m accustomed to him grown, —

  He hurts a little, though.

  I thought if I could only live

  Till that first shout got by,

  Not all pianos in the woods

  Had power to mangle me.

  I dared not meet the daffodils,

  For fear their yellow gown

  Would pierce me with a fashion

  So foreign to my own.

  I wished the grass would hurry,

  So when ’twas time to see,

  He’d be too tall, the tallest one

  Could stretch to look at me.

  I could not bear the bees should come,

  I wished they’d stay away

  In those dim countries where they go:

  What word had they for me?

  They’re here, though; not a creature failed,

  No blossom stayed away

  In gentle deference to me,

  The Queen of Calvary.

  Each one salutes me as he goes,

  And I my childish plumes

  Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment

  Of their unthinking drums.

  A route of evanescence

  With a revolving wheel;

  A resonance of emerald,

  A rush of cochineal;

  And every blossom on the bush

  Adjusts its tumbled head, —

  The mail from Tunis, probably,

  An easy morning’s ride.

  Who robbed the woods,

  The trusting woods?

  The unsuspecting trees

  Brought out their burrs and mosses

  His fantasy to please.

  He scanned their trinkets, curious,

  He grasped, he bore away.

  What will the solemn hemlock,

  What will the fir-tree say?

  The leaves, like women, interchange

  Sagacious confidence;

  Somewhat of nods, and somewhat of

  Portentous inference,

  The parties in both cases

  Enjoining secrecy, —

  Inviolable compact

  To notoriety.

  It sounded as if the streets were running,

  And then the streets stood still.

  Eclipse was all we could see at the window,

  And awe was all we could feel.

  By and by the boldest stole out of his covert,

  To see if time was there.

  Nature was in her beryl apron,

  Mixing fresher air.

  The rat is the concisest tenant.

  He pays no rent, —

  Repudiates the obligation,

  On schemes intent.

  Balking our wit

  To sound or circumvent,

  Hate cannot harm

  A foe so reticent.

  Neither decree

  Prohibits him,

  Lawful as

  Equilibrium.

  Where ships of purple gently toss

  On seas of daffodil,

  Fantastic sailors mingle,

  And then — the wharf is still.

  Blazing in gold and quenching in purple,

  Leaping like leopards to the sky,

  Then at the feet of the old horizon

  Laying her spotted face, to die;

  Stooping as low as the kitchen window,

  Touching the roof and tinting the barn,

  Kissing her bonnet to the meadow, —

  And the juggler of day is gone!

  There is a word

  Which bears a sword

  Can pierce an armed man.

  It hurls its barbed syllables, —

  At once is mute again.

  But where it fell

  The saved will tell

  On patriotic day,

  Some epauletted brother

  Gave his breath away.

  Wherever runs the breathless sun,

  Wherever roams the day,

  There is its
noiseless onset,

  There is its victory!

  Behold the keenest marksman!

  The most accomplished shot!

  Time’s sublimest target

  Is a soul ‘forgot’!

  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.

  Because I could not stop for Death,

  He kindly stopped for me;

  The carriage held but just ourselves

  And Immortality.

  We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

  And I had put away

  My labor, and my leisure too,

  For his civility.

  We passed the school where children played

  At wrestling in a ring;

  We passed the fields of gazing grain,

  We passed the setting sun.

  We paused before a house that seemed

  A swelling of the ground;

  The roof was scarcely visible,

  The cornice but a mound.

  Since then ’tis centuries; but each

  Feels shorter than the day

  I first surmised the horses’ heads

  Were toward eternity.