Poems by Emily Dickinson Second Series

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by Emily Dickinson


  XVI.

  WHAT if I say I shall not wait?

  What if I burst the fleshly gate

  And pass, escaped, to thee?

  What if I file this mortal off,

  See where it hurt me, -- that 's enough, --

  And wade in liberty?

  They cannot take us any more, --

  Dungeons may call, and guns implore;

  Unmeaning now, to me,

  As laughter was an hour ago,

  Or laces, or a travelling show,

  Or who died yesterday!

  III. NATURE.

  I. MOTHER NATURE.

  NATURE, the gentlest mother,

  Impatient of no child,

  The feeblest or the waywardest, --

  Her admonition mild

  In forest and the hill

  By traveller is heard,

  Restraining rampant squirrel

  Or too impetuous bird.

  How fair her conversation,

  A summer afternoon, --

  Her household, her assembly;

  And when the sun goes down

  Her voice among the aisles

  Incites the timid prayer

  Of the minutest cricket,

  The most unworthy flower.

  NATURE. When all the children sleep

  She turns as long away

  As will suffice to light her lamps;

  Then, bending from the sky

  With infinite affection

  And infiniter care,

  Her golden finger on her lip,

  Wills silence everywhere.

  II. OUT OF THE MORNING.

  WILL there really be a morning?

  Is there such a thing as day?

  Could I see it from the mountains

  If I were as tall as they?

  Has it feet like water-lilies?

  Has it feathers like a bird?

  Is it brought from famous countries

  Of which I have never heard?

  Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!

  Oh, some wise man from the skies!

  Please to tell a little pilgrim

  Where the place called morning lies!

  III.

  AT half-past three a single bird

  Unto a silent sky

  Propounded but a single term

  Of cautious melody.

  At half-past four, experiment

  Had subjugated test,

  And lo! her silver principle

  Supplanted all the rest.

  At half-past seven, element

  Nor implement was seen,

  And place was where the presence was,

  Circumference between.

  IV. DAY'S PARLOR.

  THE day came slow, till five o'clock,

  Then sprang before the hills

  Like hindered rubies, or the light

  A sudden musket spills.

  The purple could not keep the east,

  The sunrise shook from fold,

  Like breadths of topaz, packed a night,

  The lady just unrolled.

  The happy winds their timbrels took;

  The birds, in docile rows,

  Arranged themselves around their prince

  (The wind is prince of those).

  The orchard sparkled like a Jew, --

  How mighty 't was, to stay

  A guest in this stupendous place,

  The parlor of the day!

  V. THE SUN'S WOOING.

  THE sun just touched the morning;

  The morning, happy thing,

  Supposed that he had come to dwell,

  And life would be all spring.

  She felt herself supremer, --

  A raised, ethereal thing;

  Henceforth for her what holiday!

  Meanwhile, her wheeling king

  Trailed slow along the orchards

  His haughty, spangled hems,

  Leaving a new necessity, --

  The want of diadems!

  The morning fluttered, staggered,

  Felt feebly for her crown, --

  Her unanointed forehead

  Henceforth her only one.

  VI. THE ROBIN.

  THE robin is the one

  That interrupts the morn

  With hurried, few, express reports

  When March is scarcely on.

  The robin is the one

  That overflows the noon

  With her cherubic quantity,

  An April but begun.

  The robin is the one

  That speechless from her nest

  Submits that home and certainty

  And sanctity are best.

  VII. THE BUTTERFLY'S DAY.

  FROM cocoon forth a butterfly

  As lady from her door.

  Emerged -- a summer afternoon --

  Repairing everywhere,

  Without design, that I could trace,

  Except to stray abroad

  On miscellaneous enterprise

  The clovers understood.

  Her pretty parasol was seen

  Contracting in a field

  Where men made hay, then struggling hard

  With an opposing cloud,

  Where parties, phantom as herself,

  To Nowhere seemed to go

  In purposeless circumference,

  As 't were a tropic show.

  And notwithstanding bee that worked,

  And flower that zealous blew,

  This audience of idleness

  Disdained them, from the sky,

  Till sundown crept, a steady tide,

  And men that made the hay,

  And afternoon, and butterfly,

  Extinguished in its sea.

  VIII. THE BLUEBIRD.

  BEFORE you thought of spring,

  Except as a surmise,

  You see, God bless his suddenness,

  A fellow in the skies

  Of independent hues,

  A little weather-worn,

  Inspiriting habiliments

  Of indigo and brown.

  With specimens of song,

  As if for you to choose,

  Discretion in the interval,

  With gay delays he goes

  To some superior tree

  Without a single leaf,

  And shouts for joy to nobody

  But his seraphic self!

  IX. APRIL.

  AN altered look about the hills;

  A Tyrian light the village fills;

  A wider sunrise in the dawn;

  A deeper twilight on the lawn;

  A print of a vermilion foot;

  A purple finger on the slope;

  A flippant fly upon the pane;

  A spider at his trade again;

  An added strut in chanticleer;

  A flower expected everywhere;

  An axe shrill singing in the woods;

  Fern-odors on untravelled roads, --

  All this, and more I cannot tell,

  A furtive look you know as well,

  And Nicodemus' mystery

  Receives its annual reply.

  X. THE SLEEPING FLOWERS.

  "WHOSE are the little beds," I asked,

  "Which in the valleys lie?"

  Some shook their heads, and others smiled,

  And no one made reply.

  "Perhaps they did not hear," I said;

  "I will inquire again.

  Whose are the beds, the tiny beds

  So thick upon the plain?"

  "'T is daisy in the shortest;

  A little farther on,

  Nearest the door to wake the first,

  Little leontodon.

  "'T is iris, sir, and aster,

  Anemone and bell,

  Batschia in the blanket red,

  And chubby daffodil."

  Meanwhile at many cradles

  Her busy foot she plied,

  Humming the quaintest lullaby

  That ever rocked a child.

 
"Hush! Epigea wakens!--

  The crocus stirs her lids,

  Rhodora's cheek is crimson, --

  She's dreaming of the woods."

  Then, turning from them, reverent,

  "Their bed-time 't is," she said;

  "The bumble-bees will wake them

  When April woods are red."

  XI. MY ROSE.

  PIGMY seraphs gone astray,

  Velvet people from Vevay,

  Belles from some lost summer day,

  Bees' exclusive coterie.

  Paris could not lay the fold

  Belted down with emerald;

  Venice could not show a cheek

  Of a tint so lustrous meek.

  Never such an ambuscade

  As of brier and leaf displayed

  For my little damask maid.

  I had rather wear her grace

  Than an earl's distinguished face;

  I had rather dwell like her

  Than be Duke of Exeter

  Royalty enough for me

  To subdue the bumble-bee!

  XII. THE ORIOLE'S SECRET.

  TO hear an oriole sing

  May be a common thing,

  Or only a divine.

  It is not of the bird

  Who sings the same, unheard,

  As unto crowd.

  The fashion of the ear

  Attireth that it hear

  In dun or fair.

  So whether it be rune,

  Or whether it be none,

  Is of within;

  The "tune is in the tree,"

  The sceptic showeth me;

  "No, sir! In thee!"

  XIII. THE ORIOLE.

  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.

  XIV. IN SHADOW.

  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 't was 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.

  XV. THE HUMMING-BIRD.

  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.

  XVI. SECRETS.

  THE skies can't keep their secret!

  They tell it to the hills --

  The hills just tell the orchards --

  And they the daffodils!

  A bird, by chance, that goes that way

  Soft overheard the whole.

  If I should bribe the little bird,

  Who knows but she would tell?

  I think I won't, however,

  It's finer not to know;

  If summer were an axiom,

  What sorcery had snow?

  So keep your secret, Father!

  I would not, if I could,

  Know what the sapphire fellows do,

  In your new-fashioned world!

  XVII.

  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?

  XVIII. TWO VOYAGERS.

  TWO butterflies went out at noon

  And waltzed above a stream,

  Then stepped straight through the firmament

  And rested on a beam;

  And then together bore away

  Upon a shining sea, --

  Though never yet, in any port,

  Their coming mentioned be.

  If spoken by the distant bird,

  If met in ether sea

  By frigate or by merchantman,

  Report was not to me.

  XIX. BY THE SEA.

  I STARTED early, took my dog,

  And visited the sea;

  The mermaids in the basement

  Came out to look at me,

  And frigates in the upper floor

  Extended hempen hands,

  Presuming me to be a mouse

  Aground, upon the sands.

  But no man moved me till the tide

  Went past my simple shoe,

  And past my apron and my belt,

  And past my bodice too,

  And made as he would eat me up

  As wholly as a dew

  Upon a dandelion's sleeve --

  And then I started too.

  And he -- he followed close behind;

  I felt his silver heel

  Upon my ankle, -- then my shoes

  Would overflow with pearl.

  Until we met the solid town,

  No man he seemed to know;

  And bowing with a mighty look

  At me, the sea withdrew.

  XX. OLD-FASHIONED.

  ARCTURUS is his other name, --

  I 'd rather call him star!

  It 's so unkind of science

  To go and interfere!

  I pull a flower from the woods, --

  A monster with a glass

  Computes the stamens in a breath,

  And has her in a class.

  Whereas I took the butterfly

  Aforetime in my hat,

  He sits erect in cabinets,

  The clover-bells forgot.

  What once was heaven, is zenith now.

  Where I proposed to go

  When time's brief masquerade was done,

  Is mapped, and charted too!

  What if the poles should frisk about

  And stand upon their heads!

  I hope I 'm ready for the worst,

  Whatever prank betides!

  Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven 's changed!

  I ho
pe the children there

  Won't be new-fashioned when I come,

  And laugh at me, and stare!

  I hope the father in the skies

  Will lift his little girl, --

  Old-fashioned, naughty, everything, --

  Over the stile of pearl!

  XXI. A TEMPEST.

  AN awful tempest mashed the air,

  The clouds were gaunt and few;

  A black, as of a spectre's cloak,

  Hid heaven and earth from view.

  The creatures chuckled on the roofs

  And whistled in the air,

  And shook their fists and gnashed their teeth,

  And swung their frenzied hair.

  The morning lit, the birds arose;

  The monster's faded eyes

  Turned slowly to his native coast,

  And peace was Paradise!

  XXII. THE SEA.

  AN everywhere of silver,

  With ropes of sand

  To keep it from effacing

  The track called land.

  XXIII. IN THE GARDEN.

  A BIRD came down the walk:

  He did not know I saw;

  He bit an angle-worm in halves

  And ate the fellow, raw.

  And then he drank a dew

  From a convenient grass,

  And then hopped sidewise to the wall

  To let a beetle pass.

  He glanced with rapid eyes

  That hurried all abroad, --

  They looked like frightened beads, I thought;

  He stirred his velvet head

  Like one in danger; cautious,

  I offered him a crumb,

 

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