Poems by Emily Dickinson Third Series Read online

Scantily dealt to the summer morning,

  Saved for your ear when lutes be old.

  Loose the flood, you shall find it patent,

  Gush after gush, reserved for you;

  Scarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas,

  Now, do you doubt that your bird was true?

  VIII.

  TO lose thee, sweeter than to gain

  All other hearts I knew.

  'T is true the drought is destitute,

  But then I had the dew!

  The Caspian has its realms of sand,

  Its other realm of sea;

  Without the sterile perquisite

  No Caspian could be.

  IX.

  POOR little heart!

  Did they forget thee?

  Then dinna care! Then dinna care!

  Proud little heart!

  Did they forsake thee?

  Be debonair! Be debonair!

  Frail little heart!

  I would not break thee:

  Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me?

  Gay little heart!

  Like morning glory

  Thou'll wilted be; thou'll wilted be!

  X. FORGOTTEN.

  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'!

  XI.

  I'VE got an arrow here;

  Loving the hand that sent it,

  I the dart revere.

  Fell, they will say, in 'skirmish'!

  Vanquished, my soul will know,

  By but a simple arrow

  Sped by an archer's bow.

  XII. THE MASTER.

  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.

  XIII.

  HEART, we will forget him!

  You and I, to-night!

  You may forget the warmth he gave,

  I will forget the light.

  When you have done, pray tell me,

  That I my thoughts may dim;

  Haste! lest while you're lagging,

  I may remember him!

  XIV.

  FATHER, I bring thee not myself, --

  That were the little load;

  I bring thee the imperial heart

  I had not strength to hold.

  The heart I cherished in my own

  Till mine too heavy grew,

  Yet strangest, heavier since it went,

  Is it too large for you?

  XV.

  WE outgrow love like other things

  And put it in the drawer,

  Till it an antique fashion shows

  Like costumes grandsires wore.

  XVI.

  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

  Till it fell,

  Yet that whip's name too noble

  Then to tell.

  Magnanimous of bird

  By boy descried,

  To sing unto the stone

  Of which it died.

  XVII. WHO?

  MY friend must be a bird,

  Because it flies!

  Mortal my friend must be,

  Because it dies!

  Barbs has it, like a bee.

  Ah, curious friend,

  Thou puzzlest me!

  XVIII.

  HE touched me, so I live to know

  That such a day, permitted so,

  I groped upon his breast.

  It was a boundless place to me,

  And silenced, as the awful sea

  Puts minor streams to rest.

  And now, I'm different from before,

  As if I breathed superior air,

  Or brushed a royal gown;

  My feet, too, that had wandered so,

  My gypsy face transfigured now

  To tenderer renown.

  XIX. DREAMS.

  LET me not mar that perfect dream

  By an auroral stain,

  But so adjust my daily night

  That it will come again.

  XX. NUMEN LUMEN.

  I LIVE with him, I see his face;

  I go no more away

  For visitor, or sundown;

  Death's single privacy,

  The only one forestaling mine,

  And that by right that he

  Presents a claim invisible,

  No wedlock granted me.

  I live with him, I hear his voice,

  I stand alive to-day

  To witness to the certainty

  Of immortality

  Taught me by Time, -- the lower way,

  Conviction every day, --

  That life like this is endless,

  Be judgment what it may.

  XXI. LONGING.

  I ENVY seas whereon he rides,

  I envy spokes of wheels

  Of chariots that him convey,

  I envy speechless hills

  That gaze upon his journey;

  How easy all can see

  What is forbidden utterly

  As heaven, unto me!

  I envy nests of sparrows

  That dot his distant eaves,

  The wealthy fly upon his pane,

  The happy, happy leaves

  That just abroad his window

  Have summer's leave to be,

  The earrings of Pizarro

  Could not obtain for me.

  I envy light that wakes him,

  And bells that boldly ring

  To tell him it is noon abroad, --

  Myself his noon could bring,

  Yet interdict my blossom

  And abrogate my bee,

  Lest noon in everlasting night

  Drop Gabriel and me.

  XXII. WEDDED.

  A SOLEMN thing it was, I said,

  A woman white to be,

  And wear, if God should count me fit,

  Her hallowed mystery.

  A timid thing to drop a life

  Into the purple well,

  Too plummetless that it come back

  Eternity until.

  III. NATURE.

  I. NATURE'S CHANGES.

  THE springtime's pallid landscape

  Will glow like bright bouquet,

  Though drifted deep in parian

  The village lies to-day.

  The lilacs, bending many a year,

  With purple load will hang;

  The bees will not forget the tune

  Their old forefathers sang.

  The rose will redden in the bog,

  The aster on the hill

  Her everlasting fashion set,

  And covenant gentians frill,

  Till summer folds her miracle

  As women do their gown,

  Or priests adjust the symbols

  When sacrament is done.

  II. THE TULIP.

  SHE slept beneath a tree

  Remembered but by
me.

  I touched her cradle mute;

  She recognized the foot,

  Put on her carmine suit, --

  And see!

  III.

  A LIGHT exists in spring

  Not present on the year

  At any other period.

  When March is scarcely here

  A color stands abroad

  On solitary hills

  That science cannot overtake,

  But human nature feels.

  It waits upon the lawn;

  It shows the furthest tree

  Upon the furthest slope we know;

  It almost speaks to me.

  Then, as horizons step,

  Or noons report away,

  Without the formula of sound,

  It passes, and we stay:

  A quality of loss

  Affecting our content,

  As trade had suddenly encroached

  Upon a sacrament.

  IV. THE WAKING YEAR.

  A LADY red upon the hill

  Her annual secret keeps;

  A lady white within the field

  In placid lily sleeps!

  The tidy breezes with their brooms

  Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!

  Prithee, my pretty housewives!

  Who may expected be?

  The neighbors do not yet suspect!

  The woods exchange a smile --

  Orchard, and buttercup, and bird --

  In such a little while!

  And yet how still the landscape stands,

  How nonchalant the wood,

  As if the resurrection

  Were nothing very odd!

  V. TO MARCH.

  DEAR March, come in!

  How glad I am!

  I looked for you before.

  Put down your hat --

  You must have walked --

  How out of breath you are!

  Dear March, how are you?

  And the rest?

  Did you leave Nature well?

  Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,

  I have so much to tell!

  I got your letter, and the birds';

  The maples never knew

  That you were coming, -- I declare,

  How red their faces grew!

  But, March, forgive me --

  And all those hills

  You left for me to hue;

  There was no purple suitable,

  You took it all with you.

  Who knocks? That April!

  Lock the door!

  I will not be pursued!

  He stayed away a year, to call

  When I am occupied.

  But trifles look so trivial

  As soon as you have come,

  That blame is just as dear as praise

  And praise as mere as blame.

  VI. MARCH.

  WE like March, his shoes are purple,

  He is new and high;

  Makes he mud for dog and peddler,

  Makes he forest dry;

  Knows the adder's tongue his coming,

  And begets her spot.

  Stands the sun so close and mighty

  That our minds are hot.

  News is he of all the others;

  Bold it were to die

  With the blue-birds buccaneering

  On his British sky.

  VII.

  DAWN.

  NOT knowing when the dawn will come

  I open every door;

  Or has it feathers like a bird,

  Or billows like a shore?

  VIII.

  A MURMUR in the trees to note,

  Not loud enough for wind;

  A star not far enough to seek,

  Nor near enough to find;

  A long, long yellow on the lawn,

  A hubbub as of feet;

  Not audible, as ours to us,

  But dapperer, more sweet;

  A hurrying home of little men

  To houses unperceived, --

  All this, and more, if I should tell,

  Would never be believed.

  Of robins in the trundle bed

  How many I espy

  Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings,

  Although I heard them try!

  But then I promised ne'er to tell;

  How could I break my word?

  So go your way and I'll go mine, --

  No fear you'll miss the road.

  IX.

  MORNING is the place for dew,

  Corn is made at noon,

  After dinner light for flowers,

  Dukes for setting sun!

  X.

  TO my quick ear the leaves conferred;

  The bushes they were bells;

  I could not find a privacy

  From Nature's sentinels.

  In cave if I presumed to hide,

  The walls began to tell;.

  Creation seemed a mighty crack

  To make me visible.

  XI. A ROSE.

  A SEPAL, petal, and a thorn

  Upon a common summer's morn,

  A flash of dew, a bee or two,

  A breeze

  A caper in the trees, --

  And I'm a rose!

  XII.

  HIGH from the earth I heard a bird;

  He trod upon the trees

  As he esteemed them trifles,

  And then he spied a breeze,

  And situated softly

  Upon a pile of wind

  Which in a perturbation

  Nature had left behind.

  A joyous-going fellow

  I gathered from his talk,

  Which both of benediction

  And badinage partook,

  Without apparent burden,

  I learned, in leafy wood

  He was the faithful father

  Of a dependent brood;

  And this untoward transport

  His remedy for care, --

  A contrast to our respites.

  How different we are!

  XIII. COBWEBS.

  THE spider as an artist

  Has never been employed

  Though his surpassing merit

  Is freely certified

  By every broom and Bridget

  Throughout a Christian land.

  Neglected son of genius,

  I take thee by the hand.

  XIV. A WELL.

  WHAT mystery pervades a well!

  The water lives so far,

  Like neighbor from another world

  Residing in a jar.

  The grass does not appear afraid;

  I often wonder he

  Can stand so close and look so bold

  At what is dread to me.

  Related somehow they may be, --

  The sedge stands next the sea,

  Where he is floorless, yet of fear

  No evidence gives he.

  But nature is a stranger yet;

  The ones that cite her most

  Have never passed her haunted house,

  Nor simplified her ghost.

  To pity those that know her not

  Is helped by the regret

  That those who know her, know her less

  The nearer her they get.

  XV.

  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

  XVI. THE WIND.

  IT's like the light, --

  A fashionless delight

  It's like the bee, --

  A dateless melody.

  It's like the woods,

  Private like breeze,

  Phraseless, yet it stirs

  The proudest trees.

  It's like the morning, --

  Best when it's done, --

  The everlasting clocks

  Chime noon.

  XVII.

  A DEW suffi
ced itself

  And satisfied a leaf,

  And felt, 'how vast a destiny!

  How trivial is life!'

  The sun went out to work,

  The day went out to play,

  But not again that dew was seen

  By physiognomy.

  Whether by day abducted,

  Or emptied by the sun

  Into the sea, in passing,

  Eternally unknown.

  XVIII. THE WOODPECKER.

  HIS bill an auger is,

  His head, a cap and frill.

  He laboreth at every tree, --

  A worm his utmost goal.

  XIX. A SNAKE.

  SWEET is the swamp with its secrets,

  Until we meet a snake;

  'T is then we sigh for houses,

  And our departure take

  At that enthralling gallop

  That only childhood knows.

  A snake is summer's treason,

  And guile is where it goes.

  XX.

  COULD I but ride indefinite,

  As doth the meadow-bee,