Complete Poems by Emily Dickinson

by Emily Dickinson

  Since breaking then, since breaking then,

  Were useless as next morning's sun,

  Where midnight frosts had lain!

  XXXVII.

  VOID.

  Great streets of silence led away

  To neighborhoods of pause;

  Here was no notice, no dissent,

  No universe, no laws.

  By clocks 't was morning, and for night

  The bells at distance called;

  But epoch had no basis here,

  For period exhaled.

  XXXVIII.

  A throe upon the features

  A hurry in the breath,

  An ecstasy of parting

  Denominated "Death," —

  An anguish at the mention,

  Which, when to patience grown,

  I 've known permission given

  To rejoin its own.

  XXXIX.

  SAVED!

  Of tribulation these are they

  Denoted by the white;

  The spangled gowns, a lesser rank

  Of victors designate.

  All these did conquer; but the ones

  Who overcame most times

  Wear nothing commoner than snow,

  No ornament but palms.

  Surrender is a sort unknown

  On this superior soil;

  Defeat, an outgrown anguish,

  Remembered as the mile

  Our panting ankle barely gained

  When night devoured the road;

  But we stood whispering in the house,

  And all we said was "Saved"!

  XL.

  I think just how my shape will rise

  When I shall be forgiven,

  Till hair and eyes and timid head

  Are out of sight, in heaven.

  I think just how my lips will weigh

  With shapeless, quivering prayer

  That you, so late, consider me,

  The sparrow of your care.

  I mind me that of anguish sent,

  Some drifts were moved away

  Before my simple bosom broke, —

  And why not this, if they?

  And so, until delirious borne

  I con that thing, — "forgiven," —

  Till with long fright and longer trust

  I drop my heart, unshriven!

  XLI.

  THE FORGOTTEN GRAVE.

  After a hundred years

  Nobody knows the place, —

  Agony, that enacted there,

  Motionless as peace.

  Motionless as peace.

  Weeds triumphant ranged,

  Strangers strolled and spelled

  At the lone orthography

  Of the elder dead.

  Winds of summer fields

  Recollect the way, —

  Instinct picking up the key

  Dropped by memory.

  XLII.

  Lay this laurel on the one

  Too intrinsic for renown.

  Laurel! veil your deathless tree, —

  Him you chasten, that is he!

  Third Series

  III.

  HOPE.

  Hope is a subtle glutton;

  He feeds upon the fair;

  And yet, inspected closely,

  What abstinence is there!

  His is the halcyon table

  That never seats but one,

  And whatsoever is consumed

  The same amounts remain.

  IV.

  FORBIDDEN FRUIT.

  I.

  Forbidden fruit a flavor has

  That lawful orchards mocks;

  How luscious lies the pea within

  The pod that Duty locks!

  V.

  FORBIDDEN FRUIT.

  II.

  Heaven is what I cannot reach!

  The apple on the tree,

  Provided it do hopeless hang,

  That 'heaven' is, to me.

  The color on the cruising cloud,

  The interdicted ground

  Behind the hill, the house behind, —

  There Paradise is found!

  VI.

  A WORD.

  A word is dead

  When it is said,

  Some say.

  I say it just

  Begins to live

  That day.

  VII.

  To venerate the simple days

  Which lead the seasons by,

  Needs but to remember

  That from you or me

  They may take the trifle

  Termed mortality!

  To invest existence with a stately air,

  Needs but to remember

  That the acorn there

  Is the egg of forests

  For the upper air!

  VIII.

  LIFE'S TRADES.

  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!

  IX.

  Drowning is not so pitiful

  As the attempt to rise.

  Three times, 't is said, a sinking man

  Comes up to face the skies,

  And then declines forever

  To that abhorred abode

  Where hope and he part company, —

  For he is grasped of God.

  The Maker's cordial visage,

  However good to see,

  Is shunned, we must admit it,

  Like an adversity.

  X.

  How still the bells in steeples stand,

  Till, swollen with the sky,

  They leap upon their silver feet

  In frantic melody!

  XI.

  If the foolish call them 'flowers,'

  Need the wiser tell?

  If the savans 'classify' them,

  It is just as well!

  Those who read the Revelations

  Must not criticise

  Those who read the same edition

  With beclouded eyes!

  Could we stand with that old Moses

  Canaan denied, —

  Scan, like him, the stately landscape

  On the other side, —

  Doubtless we should deem superfluous

  Many sciences

  Not pursued by learnèd angels

  In scholastic skies!

  Low amid that glad Belles lettres

  Grant that we may stand,

  Stars, amid profound Galaxies,

  At that grand 'Right hand'!

  XII.

  A SYLLABLE.

  Could mortal lip divine

  The undeveloped freight

  Of a delivered syllable,

  'T would crumble with the weight.

  XIII.

  PARTING.

  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.

  XIV.

  ASPIRATION.

  We never know how high we are

  Till we are called to rise;

  And then, if we are true to plan,

  Our statures touch the skies.

  The heroism we recite

  Would be a daily thing,

  Did not ourselves the cubits warp

  For fear to be a king.

  XV.

  THE INEVITABLE.

  While I was fearing it, it came,

  But came with less of fear,

  Because that fearing it so long

  Had almost made it dear.

  There is a fitting a dismay,

  A fitting a despair.

  'Tis harder knowing it is due,

  Than knowing it is here.

  The trying on the utmost,

  The mornin
g it is new,

  Is terribler than wearing it

  A whole existence through.

  XVI.

  A BOOK.

  There is no frigate like a book

  To take us lands away,

  Nor any coursers like a page

  Of prancing poetry.

  This traverse may the poorest take

  Without oppress of toll;

  How frugal is the chariot

  That bears a human soul!

  XVII.

  Who has not found the heaven below

  Will fail of it above.

  God's residence is next to mine,

  His furniture is love.

  XVIII.

  A PORTRAIT.

  A face devoid of love or grace,

  A hateful, hard, successful face,

  A face with which a stone

  Would feel as thoroughly at ease

  As were they old acquaintances, —

  First time together thrown.

  XIX.

  I HAD A GUINEA GOLDEN.

  I had a guinea golden;

  I lost it in the sand,

  And though the sum was simple,

  And pounds were in the land,

  Still had it such a value

  Unto my frugal eye,

  That when I could not find it

  I sat me down to sigh.

  I had a crimson robin

  Who sang full many a day,

  But when the woods were painted

  He, too, did fly away.

  Time brought me other robins, —

  Their ballads were the same, —

  Still for my missing troubadour

  I kept the 'house at hame.'

  I had a star in heaven;

  One Pleiad was its name,

  And when I was not heeding

  It wandered from the same.

  And though the skies are crowded,

  And all the night ashine,

  I do not care about it,

  Since none of them are mine.

  My story has a moral:

  I have a missing friend, —

  Pleiad its name, and robin,

  And guinea in the sand, —

  And when this mournful ditty,

  Accompanied with tear,

  Shall meet the eye of traitor

  In country far from here,

  Grant that repentance solemn

  May seize upon his mind,

  And he no consolation

  Beneath the sun may find.

  NOTE. — This poem may have had, like many others, a

  personal origin. It is more than probable that it was

  sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty

  reminder of letter-writing delinquencies.

  XX.

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON.

  From all the jails the boys and girls

  Ecstatically leap, —

  Beloved, only afternoon

  That prison doesn't keep.

  They storm the earth and stun the air,

  A mob of solid bliss.

  Alas! that frowns could lie in wait

  For such a foe as this!

  XXI.

  Few get enough, — enough is one;

  To that ethereal throng

  Have not each one of us the right

  To stealthily belong?

  XXII.

  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!

  XXIII.

  THE LOST THOUGHT.

  I felt a clearing 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.

  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