Kitabı oku: «Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete»

First series

PREFACE

The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called "the Poetry of the Portfolio,"—something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind. Such verse must inevitably forfeit whatever advantage lies in the discipline of public criticism and the enforced conformity to accepted ways. On the other hand, it may often gain something through the habit of freedom and the unconventional utterance of daring thoughts. In the case of the present author, there was absolutely no choice in the matter; she must write thus, or not at all. A recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father's grounds, she habitually concealed her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends; and it was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or four poems. Yet she wrote verses in great abundance; and though brought curiously indifferent to all conventional rules, had yet a rigorous literary standard of her own, and often altered a word many times to suit an ear which had its own tenacious fastidiousness.

Miss Dickinson was born in Amherst, Mass., Dec. 10, 1830, and died there May 15, 1886. Her father, Hon. Edward Dickinson, was the leading lawyer of Amherst, and was treasurer of the well-known college there situated. It was his custom once a year to hold a large reception at his house, attended by all the families connected with the institution and by the leading people of the town. On these occasions his daughter Emily emerged from her wonted retirement and did her part as gracious hostess; nor would any one have known from her manner, I have been told, that this was not a daily occurrence. The annual occasion once past, she withdrew again into her seclusion, and except for a very few friends was as invisible to the world as if she had dwelt in a nunnery. For myself, although I had corresponded with her for many years, I saw her but twice face to face, and brought away the impression of something as unique and remote as Undine or Mignon or Thekla.

This selection from her poems is published to meet the desire of her personal friends, and especially of her surviving sister. It is believed that the thoughtful reader will find in these pages a quality more suggestive of the poetry of William Blake than of anything to be elsewhere found,—flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame. They are here published as they were written, with very few and superficial changes; although it is fair to say that the titles have been assigned, almost invariably, by the editors. In many cases these verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed. In other cases, as in the few poems of shipwreck or of mental conflict, we can only wonder at the gift of vivid imagination by which this recluse woman can delineate, by a few touches, the very crises of physical or mental struggle. And sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain, sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the reader regret its sudden cessation. But the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight, uttered with an uneven vigor sometimes exasperating, seemingly wayward, but really unsought and inevitable. After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote in his earlier and better days, "No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought."

—Thomas Wentworth Higginson

 
This is my letter to the world,
    That never wrote to me, —
The simple news that Nature told,
    With tender majesty.
 
 
Her message is committed
    To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
    Judge tenderly of me!
 

I. LIFE

I

SUCCESS

 
[Published in "A Masque of Poets"
at the request of "H.H.," the author's
fellow-townswoman and friend.]
 
 
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
 
 
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
 
 
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear!
 

II

 
Our share of night to bear,
Our share of morning,
Our blank in bliss to fill,
Our blank in scorning.
 
 
Here a star, and there a star,
Some lose their way.
Here a mist, and there a mist,
Afterwards – day!
 

III

ROUGE ET NOIR

 
Soul, wilt thou toss again?
By just such a hazard
Hundreds have lost, indeed,
But tens have won an all.
 
 
Angels' breathless ballot
Lingers to record thee;
Imps in eager caucus
Raffle for my soul.
 

IV

ROUGE GAGNE

 
'T is so much joy! 'T is so much joy!
If I should fail, what poverty!
And yet, as poor as I
Have ventured all upon a throw;
Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so
This side the victory!
 
 
Life is but life, and death but death!
Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!
And if, indeed, I fail,
At least to know the worst is sweet.
Defeat means nothing but defeat,
No drearier can prevail!
 
 
And if I gain, – oh, gun at sea,
Oh, bells that in the steeples be,
At first repeat it slow!
For heaven is a different thing
Conjectured, and waked sudden in,
And might o'erwhelm me so!
 

V

 
Glee! The great storm is over!
Four have recovered the land;
Forty gone down together
Into the boiling sand.
 
 
Ring, for the scant salvation!
Toll, for the bonnie souls, —
Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
Spinning upon the shoals!
 
 
How they will tell the shipwreck
When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, "But the forty?
Did they come back no more?"
 
 
Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller's eye;
And the children no further question,
And only the waves reply.
 

VI

 
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
 

VII

ALMOST!

 
Within my reach!
I could have touched!
I might have chanced that way!
Soft sauntered through the village,
Sauntered as soft away!
So unsuspected violets
Within the fields lie low,
Too late for striving fingers
That passed, an hour ago.
 

VIII

 
A wounded deer leaps highest,
I've heard the hunter tell;
'T is but the ecstasy of death,
And then the brake is still.
 
 
The smitten rock that gushes,
The trampled steel that springs;
A cheek is always redder
Just where the hectic stings!
 
 
Mirth is the mail of anguish,
In which it cautions arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And "You're hurt" exclaim!
 

IX

 
The heart asks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;
 
 
And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.
 

X

IN A LIBRARY

 
A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,
 
 
His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.
 
 
His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;
 
 
What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty.
And Sophocles a man;
 
 
When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,
 
 
He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true;
He lived where dreams were sown.
 
 
His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.
 

XI

 
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, – you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
 

XII

 
I asked no other thing,
No other was denied.
I offered Being for it;
The mighty merchant smiled.
 
 
Brazil? He twirled a button,
Without a glance my way:
"But, madam, is there nothing else
That we can show to-day?"
 

XIII

EXCLUSION

 
The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.
 
 
Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.
 
 
I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.
 

XIV

THE SECRET

 
Some things that fly there be, —
Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:
Of these no elegy.
 
 
Some things that stay there be, —
Grief, hills, eternity:
Nor this behooveth me.
 
 
There are, that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the riddle lies!
 

XV

THE LONELY HOUSE

 
I know some lonely houses off the road
A robber 'd like the look of, —
Wooden barred,
And windows hanging low,
Inviting to
A portico,
Where two could creep:
One hand the tools,
The other peep
To make sure all's asleep.
Old-fashioned eyes,
Not easy to surprise!
 
 
How orderly the kitchen 'd look by night,
With just a clock, —
But they could gag the tick,
And mice won't bark;
And so the walls don't tell,
None will.
 
 
A pair of spectacles ajar just stir —
An almanac's aware.
Was it the mat winked,
Or a nervous star?
The moon slides down the stair
To see who's there.
 
 
There's plunder, – where?
Tankard, or spoon,
Earring, or stone,
A watch, some ancient brooch
To match the grandmamma,
Staid sleeping there.
 
 
Day rattles, too,
Stealth's slow;
The sun has got as far
As the third sycamore.
Screams chanticleer,
"Who's there?"
And echoes, trains away,
Sneer – "Where?"
While the old couple, just astir,
Fancy the sunrise left the door ajar!
 

XVI

 
To fight aloud is very brave,
But gallanter, I know,
Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe.
 
 
Who win, and nations do not see,
Who fall, and none observe,
Whose dying eyes no country
Regards with patriot love.
 
 
We trust, in plumed procession,
For such the angels go,
Rank after rank, with even feet
And uniforms of snow.
 

XVII

DAWN

 
When night is almost done,
And sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the spaces,
It 's time to smooth the hair
 
 
And get the dimples ready,
And wonder we could care
For that old faded midnight
That frightened but an hour.
 

XVIII

THE BOOK OF MARTYRS

 
Read, sweet, how others strove,
Till we are stouter;
What they renounced,
Till we are less afraid;
How many times they bore
The faithful witness,
Till we are helped,
As if a kingdom cared!
 
 
Read then of faith
That shone above the fagot;
Clear strains of hymn
The river could not drown;
Brave names of men
And celestial women,
Passed out of record
Into renown!
 

XIX

THE MYSTERY OF PAIN

 
Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.
 
 
It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.
 

XX

 
I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!
 
 
Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
 
 
When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!
 
 
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!
 

XXI

A BOOK

 
He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!
 

XXII

 
I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.
 
 
Nor had I time to love; but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.
 

XXIII

UNRETURNING

 
'T was such a little, little boat
That toddled down the bay!
'T was such a gallant, gallant sea
That beckoned it away!
 
 
'T was such a greedy, greedy wave
That licked it from the coast;
Nor ever guessed the stately sails
My little craft was lost!
 

XXIV

 
Whether my bark went down at sea,
Whether she met with gales,
Whether to isles enchanted
She bent her docile sails;
 
 
By what mystic mooring
She is held to-day, —
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,
 

 
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
 
 
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
 
 
Since then 't is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
 

XXVIII

 
She went as quiet as the dew
From a familiar flower.
Not like the dew did she return
At the accustomed hour!
 
 
She dropt as softly as a star
From out my summer's eve;
Less skilful than Leverrier
It's sorer to believe!
 

XXIX

RESURGAM

 
At last to be identified!
At last, the lamps upon thy side,
The rest of life to see!
Past midnight, past the morning star!
Past sunrise! Ah! what leagues there are
Between our feet and day!
 

XXX

 
Except to heaven, she is nought;
Except for angels, lone;
Except to some wide-wandering bee,
A flower superfluous blown;
 
 
Except for winds, provincial;
Except by butterflies,
Unnoticed as a single dew
That on the acre lies.
 
 
The smallest housewife in the grass,
Yet take her from the lawn,
And somebody has lost the face
That made existence home!
 

XXXI

 
Death is a dialogue between
The spirit and the dust.
"Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,
I have another trust."
 
 
Death doubts it, argues from the ground.
The Spirit turns away,
Just laying off, for evidence,
An overcoat of clay.
 

XXXII

 
It was too late for man,
But early yet for God;
Creation impotent to help,
But prayer remained our side.
 
 
How excellent the heaven,
When earth cannot be had;
How hospitable, then, the face
Of our old neighbor, God!
 

XXXIII

ALONG THE POTOMAC

 
When I was small, a woman died.
To-day her only boy
Went up from the Potomac,
His face all victory,
 
 
To look at her; how slowly
The seasons must have turned
Till bullets clipt an angle,
And he passed quickly round!
 
 
If pride shall be in Paradise
I never can decide;
Of their imperial conduct,
No person testified.
 
 
But proud in apparition,
That woman and her boy
Pass back and forth before my brain,
As ever in the sky.
 

XXXIV

 
The daisy follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
    Sits shyly at his feet.
He, waking, finds the flower near.
"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"
    "Because, sir, love is sweet!"
 
 
We are the flower, Thou the sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline,
    We nearer steal to Thee, —
Enamoured of the parting west,
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
    Night's possibility!
 

XXXV

EMANCIPATION

 
No rack can torture me,
My soul's at liberty
Behind this mortal bone
There knits a bolder one
 
 
You cannot prick with saw,
Nor rend with scymitar.
Two bodies therefore be;
Bind one, and one will flee.
 
 
The eagle of his nest
No easier divest
And gain the sky,
Than mayest thou,
 
 
Except thyself may be
Thine enemy;
Captivity is consciousness,
So's liberty.
 

XXXVI

LOST

 
I lost a world the other day.
Has anybody found?
You'll know it by the row of stars
Around its forehead bound.
 
 
A rich man might not notice it;
Yet to my frugal eye
Of more esteem than ducats.
Oh, find it, sir, for me!
 

XXXVII

 
If I shouldn't be alive
When the robins come,
Give the one in red cravat
A memorial crumb.
 
 
If I couldn't thank you,
Being just asleep,
You will know I'm trying
With my granite lip!
 

XXXVIII

 
Sleep is supposed to be,
By souls of sanity,
The shutting of the eye.
 
 
Sleep is the station grand
Down which on either hand
The hosts of witness stand!
 
 
Morn is supposed to be,
By people of degree,
The breaking of the day.
 
 
Morning has not occurred!
That shall aurora be
East of eternity;
 
 
One with the banner gay,
One in the red array, —
That is the break of day.
 

XXXIX

 
I shall know why, when time is over,
And I have ceased to wonder why;
Christ will explain each separate anguish
In the fair schoolroom of the sky.
 
 
He will tell me what Peter promised,
And I, for wonder at his woe,
I shall forget the drop of anguish
That scalds me now, that scalds me now.
 

XL

 
I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod;
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!
 
 
Angels, twice descending,
Reimbursed my store.
Burglar, banker, father,
I am poor once more!
 

Second Series

PREFACE

The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily Dickinson's poems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modern artificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of the qualities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatest themes,—life and love and death. That "irresistible needle-touch," as one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the very core of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic as it has been unexpected even to those who knew best her compelling power. This second volume, while open to the same criticism as to form with its predecessor, shows also the same shining beauties.

Although Emily Dickinson had been in the habit of sending occasional poems to friends and correspondents, the full extent of her writing was by no means imagined by them. Her friend "H.H." must at least have suspected it, for in a letter dated 5th September, 1884, she wrote:—

MY DEAR FRIEND,– What portfolios full of verses you must have! It is a cruel wrong to your "day and generation" that you will not give them light.

If such a thing should happen as that I should outlive you, I wish you would make me your literary legatee and executor. Surely after you are what is called "dead" you will be willing that the poor ghosts you have left behind should be cheered and pleased by your verses, will you not? You ought to be. I do not think we have a right to withhold from the world a word or a thought any more than a deed which might help a single soul. . . .

    Truly yours,

HELEN JACKSON

The "portfolios" were found, shortly after Emily Dickinson's death, by her sister and only surviving housemate. Most of the poems had been carefully copied on sheets of note-paper, and tied in little fascicules, each of six or eight sheets. While many of them bear evidence of having been thrown off at white heat, still more had received thoughtful revision. There is the frequent addition of rather perplexing foot-notes, affording large choice of words and phrases. And in the copies which she sent to friends, sometimes one form, sometimes another, is found to have been used. Without important exception, her friends have generously placed at the disposal of the Editors any poems they had received from her; and these have given the obvious advantage of comparison among several renderings of the same verse.

To what further rigorous pruning her verses would have been subjected had she published them herself, we cannot know. They should be regarded in many cases as merely the first strong and suggestive sketches of an artist, intended to be embodied at some time in the finished picture.

Emily Dickinson appears to have written her first poems in the winter of 1862. In a letter to one of the present Editors the April following, she says, "I made no verse, but one or two, until this winter."

The handwriting was at first somewhat like the delicate, running Italian hand of our elder gentlewomen; but as she advanced in breadth of thought, it grew bolder and more abrupt, until in her latest years each letter stood distinct and separate from its fellows. In most of her poems, particularly the later ones, everything by way of punctuation was discarded, except numerous dashes; and all important words began with capitals. The effect of a page of her more recent manuscript is exceedingly quaint and strong. The fac-simile given in the present volume is from one of the earlier transition periods. Although there is nowhere a date, the handwriting makes it possible to arrange the poems with general chronologic accuracy.

As a rule, the verses were without titles; but "A Country Burial," "A Thunder-Storm," "The Humming-Bird," and a few others were named by their author, frequently at the end,—sometimes only in the accompanying note, if sent to a friend.

The variation of readings, with the fact that she often wrote in pencil and not always clearly, have at times thrown a good deal of responsibility upon her Editors. But all interference not absolutely inevitable has been avoided. The very roughness of her rendering is part of herself, and not lightly to be touched; for it seems in many cases that she intentionally avoided the smoother and more usual rhymes.

Like impressionist pictures, or Wagner's rugged music, the very absence of conventional form challenges attention. In Emily Dickinson's exacting hands, the especial, intrinsic fitness of a particular order of words might not be sacrificed to anything virtually extrinsic; and her verses all show a strange cadence of inner rhythmical music. Lines are always daringly constructed, and the "thought-rhyme" appears frequently,—appealing, indeed, to an unrecognized sense more elusive than hearing.

Emily Dickinson scrutinized everything with clear-eyed frankness. Every subject was proper ground for legitimate study, even the sombre facts of death and burial, and the unknown life beyond. She touches these themes sometimes lightly, sometimes almost humorously, more often with weird and peculiar power; but she is never by any chance frivolous or trivial. And while, as one critic has said, she may exhibit toward God "an Emersonian self-possession," it was because she looked upon all life with a candor as unprejudiced as it is rare.

She had tried society and the world, and found them lacking. She was not an invalid, and she lived in seclusion from no love-disappointment. Her life was the normal blossoming of a nature introspective to a high degree, whose best thought could not exist in pretence.Storm, wind, the wild March sky, sunsets and dawns; the birds and bees, butterflies and flowers of her garden, with a few trusted human friends, were sufficient companionship. The coming of the first robin was a jubilee beyond crowning of monarch or birthday of pope; the first red leaf hurrying through "the altered air," an epoch. Immortality was close about her; and while never morbid or melancholy, she lived in its presence.

MABEL LOOMIS TODD.

AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS,

    August, 1891.

 
My nosegays are for captives;
    Dim, long-expectant eyes,
Fingers denied the plucking,
    Patient till paradise,
 
 
To such, if they should whisper
    Of morning and the moor,
They bear no other errand,
    And I, no other prayer.
 

I. LIFE

I

 
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there 's a pair of us – don't tell!
They 'd banish us, you know.
 
 
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
 

II

 
I bring an unaccustomed wine
To lips long parching, next to mine,
And summon them to drink.
 
 
Crackling with fever, they essay;
I turn my brimming eyes away,
And come next hour to look.
 
 
The hands still hug the tardy glass;
The lips I would have cooled, alas!
Are so superfluous cold,
 
 
I would as soon attempt to warm
The bosoms where the frost has lain
Ages beneath the mould.
 
 
Some other thirsty there may be
To whom this would have pointed me
Had it remained to speak.
 
 
And so I always bear the cup
If, haply, mine may be the drop
Some pilgrim thirst to slake, —
 
 
If, haply, any say to me,
"Unto the little, unto me,"
When I at last awake.
 

III

 
The nearest dream recedes, unrealized.
       The heaven we chase
       Like the June bee
       Before the school-boy
       Invites the race;
       Stoops to an easy clover —
Dips – evades – teases – deploys;
       Then to the royal clouds
       Lifts his light pinnace
       Heedless of the boy
Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.
 
 
       Homesick for steadfast honey,
       Ah! the bee flies not
That brews that rare variety.
 

IV

 
We play at paste,
Till qualified for pearl,
Then drop the paste,
And deem ourself a fool.
The shapes, though, were similar,
And our new hands
Learned gem-tactics
Practising sands.
 

V

 
I found the phrase to every thought
I ever had, but one;
And that defies me, – as a hand
Did try to chalk the sun
 
 
To races nurtured in the dark; —
How would your own begin?
Can blaze be done in cochineal,
Or noon in mazarin?
 

VI

HOPE

 
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
 
 
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
 
 
I 've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
 

VII

THE WHITE HEAT

 
Dare you see a soul at the white heat?
    Then crouch within the door.
Red is the fire's common tint;
    But when the vivid ore
 
 
Has sated flame's conditions,
    Its quivering substance plays
Without a color but the light
    Of unanointed blaze.
 
 
Least village boasts its blacksmith,
    Whose anvil's even din
Stands symbol for the finer forge
    That soundless tugs within,
 
 
Refining these impatient ores
    With hammer and with blaze,
Until the designated light
    Repudiate the forge.
 

VIII

TRIUMPHANT

 
Who never lost, are unprepared
A coronet to find;
Who never thirsted, flagons
And cooling tamarind.
 
 
Who never climbed the weary league —
Can such a foot explore
The purple territories
On Pizarro's shore?
 
 
How many legions overcome?
The emperor will say.
How many colors taken
On Revolution Day?
 
 
How many bullets bearest?
The royal scar hast thou?
Angels, write "Promoted"
On this soldier's brow!
 

IX

THE TEST

 
I can wade grief,
Whole pools of it, —
I 'm used to that.
But the least push of joy
Breaks up my feet,
And I tip – drunken.
Let no pebble smile,
'T was the new liquor, —
That was all!
 
 
Power is only pain,
Stranded, through discipline,
Till weights will hang.
Give balm to giants,
And they 'll wilt, like men.
Give Himmaleh, —
They 'll carry him!
 

X

ESCAPE

 
I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude.
 
 
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars, —
Only to fail again!
 

XI

COMPENSATION

 
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
 
 
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.
 

XII

THE MARTYRS

 
Through the straight pass of suffering
The martyrs even trod,
Their feet upon temptation,
Their faces upon God.
 
 
A stately, shriven company;
Convulsion playing round,
Harmless as streaks of meteor
Upon a planet's bound.
 
 
Their faith the everlasting troth;
Their expectation fair;
The needle to the north degree
Wades so, through polar air.
 

XIII

A PRAYER

 
I meant to have but modest needs,
Such as content, and heaven;
Within my income these could lie,
And life and I keep even.
 
 
But since the last included both,
It would suffice my prayer
But just for one to stipulate,
And grace would grant the pair.
 
 
And so, upon this wise I prayed, —
Great Spirit, give to me
A heaven not so large as yours,
But large enough for me.
 
 
A smile suffused Jehovah's face;
The cherubim withdrew;
Grave saints stole out to look at me,
And showed their dimples, too.
 
 
I left the place with all my might, —
My prayer away I threw;
The quiet ages picked it up,
And Judgment twinkled, too,
 
 
That one so honest be extant
As take the tale for true
That "Whatsoever you shall ask,
Itself be given you."
 
 
But I, grown shrewder, scan the skies
With a suspicious air, —
As children, swindled for the first,
All swindlers be, infer.
 

XIV

 
The thought beneath so slight a film
Is more distinctly seen, —
As laces just reveal the surge,
Or mists the Apennine.
 

XV

 
The soul unto itself
Is an imperial friend, —
Or the most agonizing spy
An enemy could send.
 
 
Secure against its own,
No treason it can fear;
Itself its sovereign, of itself
The soul should stand in awe.
 

XVI

 
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit, – Life!
 

XVII

THE RAILWAY TRAIN

 
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
 
 
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
 
 
To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
 
 
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop – docile and omnipotent —
At its own stable door.
 

XVIII

THE SHOW

 
The show is not the show,
But they that go.
Menagerie to me
My neighbor be.
Fair play —
Both went to see.
 

XIX

 
Delight becomes pictorial
When viewed through pain, —
More fair, because impossible
That any gain.
 
 
The mountain at a given distance
In amber lies;
Approached, the amber flits a little, —
And that 's the skies!
 

XX

 
A thought went up my mind to-day
That I have had before,
But did not finish, – some way back,
I could not fix the year,
 
 
Nor where it went, nor why it came
The second time to me,
Nor definitely what it was,
Have I the art to say.
 
 
But somewhere in my soul, I know
I 've met the thing before;
It just reminded me – 't was all —
And came my way no more.
 

XXI

 
Is Heaven a physician?
They say that He can heal;
But medicine posthumous
    Is unavailable.
 
 
Is Heaven an exchequer?
    They speak of what we owe;
But that negotiation
    I 'm not a party to.
 

XXII

THE RETURN

 
Though I get home how late, how late!
So I get home, 't will compensate.
Better will be the ecstasy
That they have done expecting me,
When, night descending, dumb and dark,
They hear my unexpected knock.
Transporting must the moment be,
Brewed from decades of agony!
 
 
To think just how the fire will burn,
Just how long-cheated eyes will turn
To wonder what myself will say,
And what itself will say to me,
Beguiles the centuries of way!
 

XXIII

 
A poor torn heart, a tattered heart,
That sat it down to rest,
Nor noticed that the ebbing day
Flowed silver to the west,
Nor noticed night did soft descend
Nor constellation burn,
Intent upon the vision
Of latitudes unknown.
 
 
The angels, happening that way,
This dusty heart espied;
Tenderly took it up from toil
And carried it to God.
There, – sandals for the barefoot;
There, – gathered from the gales,
Do the blue havens by the hand
Lead the wandering sails.
 

XXIV

TOO MUCH

 
I should have been too glad, I see,
Too lifted for the scant degree
    Of life's penurious round;
My little circuit would have shamed
This new circumference, have blamed
    The homelier time behind.
 
 
I should have been too saved, I see,
Too rescued; fear too dim to me
    That I could spell the prayer
I knew so perfect yesterday, —
That scalding one, "Sabachthani,"
    Recited fluent here.
 
 
Earth would have been too much, I see,
And heaven not enough for me;
    I should have had the joy
Without the fear to justify, —
The palm without the Calvary;
    So, Saviour, crucify.
 
 
Defeat whets victory, they say;
The reefs in old Gethsemane
    Endear the shore beyond.
'T is beggars banquets best define;
'T is thirsting vitalizes wine, —
    Faith faints to understand.
 

XXV

SHIPWRECK

 
It tossed and tossed, —
A little brig I knew, —
O'ertook by blast,
It spun and spun,
And groped delirious, for morn.
 
 
It slipped and slipped,
As one that drunken stepped;
Its white foot tripped,
Then dropped from sight.
 
 
Ah, brig, good-night
To crew and you;
The ocean's heart too smooth, too blue,
To break for you.
 

XXVI

 
Victory comes late,
And is held low to freezing lips
Too rapt with frost
To take it.
How sweet it would have tasted,
Just a drop!
Was God so economical?
His table 's spread too high for us
Unless we dine on tip-toe.
Crumbs fit such little mouths,
Cherries suit robins;
The eagle's golden breakfast
Strangles them.
God keeps his oath to sparrows,
Who of little love
Know how to starve!
 

XXVII

ENOUGH

 
God gave a loaf to every bird,
But just a crumb to me;
I dare not eat it, though I starve, —
My poignant luxury
To own it, touch it, prove the feat
That made the pellet mine, —
Too happy in my sparrow chance
For ampler coveting.
 
 
It might be famine all around,
I could not miss an ear,
Such plenty smiles upon my board,
My garner shows so fair.
I wonder how the rich may feel, —
An Indiaman – an Earl?
I deem that I with but a crumb
Am sovereign of them all.
 

XXVIII

 
Experiment to me
Is every one I meet.
If it contain a kernel?
The figure of a nut
 
 
Presents upon a tree,
Equally plausibly;
But meat within is requisite,
To squirrels and to me.
 

XXIX

MY COUNTRY'S WARDROBE

 
My country need not change her gown,
Her triple suit as sweet
As when 't was cut at Lexington,
And first pronounced "a fit."
 
 
Great Britain disapproves "the stars;"
Disparagement discreet, —
There 's something in their attitude
That taunts her bayonet.
 

XXX

 
Faith is a fine invention
For gentlemen who see;
But microscopes are prudent
 

Third Series

 
It's all I have to bring to-day,
   This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
   And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, —
   Some one the sum could tell, —
This, and my heart, and all the bees
   Which in the clover dwell.
 

PREFACE

The intellectual activity of Emily Dickinson was so great that a large and characteristic choice is still possible among her literary material, and this third volume of her verses is put forth in response to the repeated wish of the admirers of her peculiar genius. Much of Emily Dickinson's prose was rhythmic, —even rhymed, though frequently not set apart in lines.

Also many verses, written as such, were sent to friends in letters; these were published in 1894, in the volumes of her Letters. It has not been necessary, however, to include them in this Series, and all have been omitted, except three or four exceptionally strong ones, as "A Book," and "With Flowers."

There is internal evidence that many of the poems were simply spontaneous flashes of insight, apparently unrelated to outward circumstance. Others, however, had an obvious personal origin; for example, the verses "I had a Guinea golden," which seem to have been sent to some friend travelling in Europe, as a dainty reminder of letter-writing delinquencies. The surroundings in which any of Emily Dickinson's verses are known to have been written usually serve to explain them clearly; but in general the present volume is full of thoughts needing no interpretation to those who apprehend this scintillating spirit.

M. L. T.

AMHERST, October, 1896.

I. LIFE

I

REAL RICHES

 
'T is little I could care for pearls
   Who own the ample sea;
Or brooches, when the Emperor
   With rubies pelteth me;
 
 
Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines;
   Or diamonds, when I see
A diadem to fit a dome
   Continual crowning me.
 

II

SUPERIORITY TO FATE

 
Superiority to fate
   Is difficult to learn.
'T is not conferred by any,
   But possible to earn
 
 
A pittance at a time,
   Until, to her surprise,
The soul with strict economy
   Subsists till Paradise.
 

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 morning 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
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, —
   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,
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,