Complete Poems by Emily Dickinson Read online

  This is the errand of the eye

  Out upon the bay.

  XXV.

  Belshazzar had a letter, —

  He never had but one;

  Belshazzar's correspondent

  Concluded and begun

  In that immortal copy

  The conscience of us all

  Can read without its glasses

  On revelation's wall.

  XXVI.

  The brain within its groove

  Runs evenly and true;

  But let a splinter swerve,

  'T were 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!

  II. LOVE.

  I.

  MINE.

  Mine by the right of the white election!

  Mine by the royal seal!

  Mine by the sign in the scarlet prison

  Bars cannot conceal!

  Mine, here in vision and in veto!

  Mine, by the grave's repeal

  Titled, confirmed, — delirious charter!

  Mine, while the ages steal!

  II.

  BEQUEST.

  You left me, sweet, two legacies, —

  A legacy of love

  A Heavenly Father would content,

  Had He the offer of;

  You left me boundaries of pain

  Capacious as the sea,

  Between eternity and time,

  Your consciousness and me.

  III.

  Alter? When the hills do.

  Falter? When the sun

  Question if his glory

  Be the perfect one.

  Surfeit? When the daffodil

  Doth of the dew:

  Even as herself, O friend!

  I will of you!

  IV.

  SUSPENSE.

  Elysium is as far as to

  The very nearest room,

  If in that room a friend await

  Felicity or doom.

  What fortitude the soul contains,

  That it can so endure

  The accent of a coming foot,

  The opening of a door!

  V.

  SURRENDER.

  Doubt me, my dim companion!

  Why, God would be content

  With but a fraction of the love

  Poured thee without a stint.

  The whole of me, forever,

  What more the woman can, —

  Say quick, that I may dower thee

  With last delight I own!

  It cannot be my spirit,

  For that was thine before;

  I ceded all of dust I knew, —

  What opulence the more

  Had I, a humble maiden,

  Whose farthest of degree

  Was that she might,

  Some distant heaven,

  Dwell timidly with thee!

  VI.

  If you were coming in the fall,

  I'd brush the summer by

  With half a smile and half a spurn,

  As housewives do a fly.

  If I could see you in a year,

  I'd wind the months in balls,

  And put them each in separate drawers,

  Until their time befalls.

  If only centuries delayed,

  I'd count them on my hand,

  Subtracting till my fingers dropped

  Into Van Diemen's land.

  If certain, when this life was out,

  That yours and mine should be,

  I'd toss it yonder like a rind,

  And taste eternity.

  But now, all ignorant of the length

  Of time's uncertain wing,

  It goads me, like the goblin bee,

  That will not state its sting.

  VII.

  WITH A FLOWER.

  I hide myself within my flower,

  That wearing on your breast,

  You, unsuspecting, wear me too —

  And angels know the rest.

  I hide myself within my flower,

  That, fading from your vase,

  You, unsuspecting, feel for me

  Almost a loneliness.

  VIII.

  PROOF.

  That I did always love,

  I bring thee proof:

  That till I loved

  I did not love enough.

  That I shall love alway,

  I offer thee

  That love is life,

  And life hath immortality.

  This, dost thou doubt, sweet?

  Then have I

  Nothing to show

  But Calvary.

  IX.

  Have you got a brook in your little heart,

  Where bashful flowers blow,

  And blushing birds go down to drink,

  And shadows tremble so?

  And nobody knows, so still it flows,

  That any brook is there;

  And yet your little draught of life

  Is daily drunken there.

  Then look out for the little brook in March,

  When the rivers overflow,

  And the snows come hurrying from the hills,

  And the bridges often go.

  And later, in August it may be,

  When the meadows parching lie,

  Beware, lest this little brook of life

  Some burning noon go dry!

  X.

  TRANSPLANTED.

  As if some little Arctic flower,

  Upon the polar hem,

  Went wandering down the latitudes,

  Until it puzzled came

  To continents of summer,

  To firmaments of sun,

  To strange, bright crowds of flowers,

  And birds of foreign tongue!

  I say, as if this little flower

  To Eden wandered in —

  What then? Why, nothing, only,

  Your inference therefrom!

  XI.

  THE OUTLET.

  My river runs to thee:

  Blue sea, wilt welcome me?

  My river waits reply.

  Oh sea, look graciously!

  I'll fetch thee brooks

  From spotted nooks, —

  Say, sea,

  Take me!

  XII.

  IN VAIN.

  I cannot live with you,

  It would be life,

  And life is over there

  Behind the shelf

  The sexton keeps the key to,

  Putting up

  Our life, his porcelain,

  Like a cup

  Discarded of the housewife,

  Quaint or broken;

  A newer Sevres pleases,

  Old ones crack.

  I could not die with you,

  For one must wait

  To shut the other's gaze down, —

  You could not.

  And I, could I stand by

  And see you freeze,

  Without my right of frost,

  Death's privilege?

  Nor could I rise with you,

  Because your face

  Would put out Jesus',

  That new grace

  Glow plain and foreign

  On my homesick eye,

  Except that you, than he

  Shone closer by.

  They'd judge us — how?

  For you served Heaven, you know,

  Or sought to;

  I could not,

  Because you saturated sight,

  And I had no more eyes

  For sordid excellence

  As Paradise.

  And were you lost, I would be,

  Though my name

  Rang loudest

  On the heavenly fame.

  And were you saved,

  And I condemned to be

  Where you were not,

  That self were hell to me.

  So we
must keep apart,

  You there, I here,

  With just the door ajar

  That oceans are,

  And prayer,

  And that pale sustenance,

  Despair!

  XIII.

  RENUNCIATION.

  There came a day at summer's full

  Entirely for me;

  I thought that such were for the saints,

  Where revelations be.

  The sun, as common, went abroad,

  The flowers, accustomed, blew,

  As if no soul the solstice passed

  That maketh all things new.

  The time was scarce profaned by speech;

  The symbol of a word

  Was needless, as at sacrament

  The wardrobe of our Lord.

  Each was to each the sealed church,

  Permitted to commune this time,

  Lest we too awkward show

  At supper of the Lamb.

  The hours slid fast, as hours will,

  Clutched tight by greedy hands;

  So faces on two decks look back,

  Bound to opposing lands.

  And so, when all the time had failed,

  Without external sound,

  Each bound the other's crucifix,

  We gave no other bond.

  Sufficient troth that we shall rise —

  Deposed, at length, the grave —

  To that new marriage, justified

  Through Calvaries of Love!

  XIV.

  LOVE'S BAPTISM.

  I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs;

  The name they dropped upon my face

  With water, in the country church,

  Is finished using now,

  And they can put it with my dolls,

  My childhood, and the string of spools

  I've finished threading too.

  Baptized before without the choice,

  But this time consciously, of grace

  Unto supremest name,

  Called to my full, the crescent dropped,

  Existence's whole arc filled up

  With one small diadem.

  My second rank, too small the first,

  Crowned, crowing on my father's breast,

  A half unconscious queen;

  But this time, adequate, erect,

  With will to choose or to reject.

  And I choose — just a throne.

  XV.

  RESURRECTION.

  'T was a long parting, but the time

  For interview had come;

  Before the judgment-seat of God,

  The last and second time

  These fleshless lovers met,

  A heaven in a gaze,

  A heaven of heavens, the privilege

  Of one another's eyes.

  No lifetime set on them,

  Apparelled as the new

  Unborn, except they had beheld,

  Born everlasting now.

  Was bridal e'er like this?

  A paradise, the host,

  And cherubim and seraphim

  The most familiar guest.

  XVI.

  APOCALYPSE.

  I'm wife; I've finished that,

  That other state;

  I'm Czar, I'm woman now:

  It's safer so.

  How odd the girl's life looks

  Behind this soft eclipse!

  I think that earth seems so

  To those in heaven now.

  This being comfort, then

  That other kind was pain;

  But why compare?

  I'm wife! stop there!

  XVII.

  THE WIFE.

  She rose to his requirement, dropped

  The playthings of her life

  To take the honorable work

  Of woman and of wife.

  If aught she missed in her new day

  Of amplitude, or awe,

  Or first prospective, or the gold

  In using wore away,

  It lay unmentioned, as the sea

  Develops pearl and weed,

  But only to himself is known

  The fathoms they abide.

  XVIII.

  APOTHEOSIS.

  Come slowly, Eden!

  Lips unused to thee,

  Bashful, sip thy jasmines,

  As the fainting bee,

  Reaching late his flower,

  Round her chamber hums,

  Counts his nectars — enters,

  And is lost in balms!

  III. NATURE.

  I.

  New feet within my garden go,

  New fingers stir the sod;

  A troubadour upon the elm

  Betrays the solitude.

  New children play upon the green,

  New weary sleep below;

  And still the pensive spring returns,

  And still the punctual snow!

  II.

  MAY-FLOWER.

  Pink, small, and punctual,

  Aromatic, low,

  Covert in April,

  Candid in May,

  Dear to the moss,

  Known by the knoll,

  Next to the robin

  In every human soul.

  Bold little beauty,

  Bedecked with thee,

  Nature forswears

  Antiquity.

  III.

  WHY?

  The murmur of a bee

  A witchcraft yieldeth me.

  If any ask me why,

  'T were easier to die

  Than tell.

  The red upon the hill

  Taketh away my will;

  If anybody sneer,

  Take care, for God is here,

  That's all.

  The breaking of the day

  Addeth to my degree;

  If any ask me how,

  Artist, who drew me so,

  Must tell!

  IV.

  Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower?

  But I could never sell.

  If you would like to borrow

  Until the daffodil

  Unties her yellow bonnet

  Beneath the village door,

  Until the bees, from clover rows

  Their hock and sherry draw,

  Why, I will lend until just then,

  But not an hour more!

  V.

  The pedigree of honey

  Does not concern the bee;

  A clover, any time, to him

  Is aristocracy.

  VI.

  A SERVICE OF SONG.

  Some keep the Sabbath going to church;

  I keep it staying at home,

  With a bobolink for a chorister,

  And an orchard for a dome.

  Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;

  I just wear my wings,

  And instead of tolling the bell for church,

  Our little sexton sings.

  God preaches, — a noted clergyman, —

  And the sermon is never long;

  So instead of getting to heaven at last,

  I'm going all along!

  VII.

  The bee is not afraid of me,

  I know the butterfly;

  The pretty people in the woods

  Receive me cordially.

  The brooks laugh louder when I come,

  The breezes madder play.

  Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists?

  Wherefore, O summer's day?

  VIII.

  SUMMER'S ARMIES.

  Some rainbow coming from the fair!

  Some vision of the world Cashmere

  I confidently see!

  Or else a peacock's purple train,

  Feather by feather, on the plain

  Fritters itself away!

  The dreamy butterflies bestir,

  Lethargic pools resume the whir

  Of last year's sundered tune.

  From some old fortress on the sun

  Baronial
bees march, one by one,

  In murmuring platoon!

  The robins stand as thick to-day

  As flakes of snow stood yesterday,

  On fence and roof and twig.

  The orchis binds her feather on

  For her old lover, Don the Sun,

  Revisiting the bog!

  Without commander, countless, still,

  The regiment of wood and hill

  In bright detachment stand.

  Behold! Whose multitudes are these?

  The children of whose turbaned seas,

  Or what Circassian land?

  IX.

  THE GRASS.

  The grass so little has to do, —

  A sphere of simple green,

  With only butterflies to brood,

  And bees to entertain,

  And stir all day to pretty tunes

  The breezes fetch along,

  And hold the sunshine in its lap

  And bow to everything;

  And thread the dews all night, like pearls,

  And make itself so fine, —

  A duchess were too common

  For such a noticing.

  And even when it dies, to pass

  In odors so divine,

  As lowly spices gone to sleep,

  Or amulets of pine.

  And then to dwell in sovereign barns,

  And dream the days away, —

  The grass so little has to do,

  I wish I were the hay!

  X.

  A little road not made of man,

  Enabled of the eye,

  Accessible to thill of bee,

  Or cart of butterfly.

  If town it have, beyond itself,

  'T is that I cannot say;

  I only sigh, — no vehicle

  Bears me along that way.

  XI.

  SUMMER SHOWER.

  A drop fell on the apple tree,

  Another on the roof;

  A half a dozen kissed the eaves,

  And made the gables laugh.

  A few went out to help the brook,

  That went to help the sea.

  Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,

  What necklaces could be!

  The dust replaced in hoisted roads,

  The birds jocoser sung;

  The sunshine threw his hat away,

  The orchards spangles hung.

  The breezes brought dejected lutes,

  And bathed them in the glee;

  The East put out a single flag,

  And signed the fete away.