Poems by Emily Dickinson Third Series Read online

  But sequence ravelled out of reach

  Like balls upon a floor.

  XXIV. RETICENCE.

  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.

  XXV. WITH FLOWERS.

  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!

  XXVI.

  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!

  XXVII.

  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.

  XXVIII. CONTRAST.

  A DOOR just opened on a street --

  I, lost, was passing by --

  An 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.

  XXIX. FRIENDS.

  ARE friends delight or pain?

  Could bounty but remain

  Riches were good.

  But if they only stay

  Bolder to fly away,

  Riches are sad.

  XXX. FIRE.

  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.

  XXXI. A MAN.

  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.

  XXXII. VENTURES.

  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.

  XXXIII. GRIEFS.

  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.

  XXXIV.

  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!

  XXXV. DISENCHANTMENT.

  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.

  XXXVI. LOST FAITH.

  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.

  XXXVII. LOST JOY.

  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.

  XXXVIII.

  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.

  XXXIX.

  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.

  XL. ALPINE GLOW.

  OUR lives are Swiss, --

&n
bsp; 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!

  XLI. REMEMBRANCE.

  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.

  XLII.

  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!

  XLIII. THE BRAIN.

  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.

  XLIV.

  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!

  XLV. THE PAST.

  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!

  XLVI.

  To help our bleaker parts

  Salubrious hours are given,

  Which if they do not fit for earth

  Drill silently for heaven.

  XLVII.

  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.

  XLVIII. DESIRE.

  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.

  XLIX. PHILOSOPHY.

  IT might be easier

  To fail with land in sight,

  Than gain my blue peninsula

  To perish of delight.

  L. POWER.

  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.

  LI.

  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!

  LII.

  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.

  LIII. EXPERIENCE.

  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.

  LIV. THANKSGIVING DAY.

  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.

  LV. CHILDISH GRIEFS.

  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.

  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.

  II. LOVE'S HUMILITY.

  MY worthiness is all my doubt,

  His merit all my fear,

  Contrasting which, my qualities

  Do lowlier appear;

  Lest I should insufficient prove

  For his beloved need,

  The chiefest apprehension

  Within my loving creed.

  So I, the undivine abode

  Of his elect content,

  Conform my soul as 't were a church

  Unto her sacrament.

  III. LOVE.

  LOVE is anterior to life,

  Posterior to death,

  Initial of creation, and

  The exponent of breath.

  IV. SATISFIED.

  ONE blessing had I, than the rest

  So larger to my eyes

  That I stopped gauging, satisfied,

  For this enchanted size.

  It was the limit of my dream,

  The focus of my prayer, --

  A perfect, paralyzing bliss

  Contented as despair.

  I knew no more of want or cold,

  Phantasms both become,

  For this new value in the soul,

  Supremest earthly sum.

  The heaven below the heaven above

  Obscured with ruddier hue.

  Life's latitude leant over-full;

  The judgment perished, too.

  Why joys so scantily disburse,

  Why Paradise defer,

  Why floods are served to us in bowls, --

  I speculate no more.


  V. WITH A FLOWER.

  WHEN roses cease to bloom, dear,

  And violets are done,

  When bumble-bees in solemn flight

  Have passed beyond the sun,

  The hand that paused to gather

  Upon this summer's day

  Will idle lie, in Auburn, --

  Then take my flower, pray!

  VI. SONG.

  SUMMER for thee grant I may be

  When summer days are flown!

  Thy music still when whippoorwill

  And oriole are done!

  For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb

  And sow my blossoms o'er!

  Pray gather me, Anemone,

  Thy flower forevermore!

  VII. LOYALTY.

  SPLIT the lark and you'll find the music,

  Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled,