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Category: Emily Dickinson

  • Death sets a thing…

     

    Emily Dickinson

    Death sets a thing significant
    The eye had hurried by,
    Except a perished creature
    Entreat us tenderly

    To ponder little workmanships
    In crayon or in wool,
    With “This was last her fingers did,”
    Industrious until

    The thimble weighed too heavy,
    The stitches stopped themselves,
    And then ‘t was put among the dust
    Upon the closet shelves.

    A book I have, a friend gave,
    Whose pencil, here and there,
    Had notched the place that pleased him,–
    At rest his fingers are.

    Now, when I read, I read not,
    For interrupting tears
    Obliterate the etchings
    Too costly for repairs.

  • A thought went up…

    Emily Dickinson

    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.

  • Like trains…

     

    Emily Dickinson

    Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
    I hear the level bee:
    A jar across the flowers goes,
    Their velvet masonry

    Withstands until the sweet assault
    Their chivalry consumes,
    While he, victorious, tilts away
    To vanquish other blooms.

    His feet are shod with gauze,
    His helmet is of gold;
    His breast, a single onyx
    With chrysoprase, inlaid.

    His labor is a chant,
    His idleness a tune;
    Oh, for a bee’s experience
    Of clovers and of noon!

  • A narrow fellow…

     
    Emily Dickinson

    A narrow fellow in the grass
    Occasionally rides;
    You may have met him,–did you not,
    His notice sudden is.

    The grass divides as with a comb,
    A spotted shaft is seen;
    And then it closes at your feet
    And opens further on.

    He likes a boggy acre,
    A floor too cool for corn.
    Yet when a child, and barefoot,
    I more than once, at morn,

    Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
    Unbraiding in the sun,–
    When, stooping to secure it,
    It wrinkled, and was gone.

    Several of nature’s people
    I know, and they know me;
    I feel for them a transport
    Of cordiality;

    But never met this fellow,
    Attended or alone,
    Without a tighter breathing,
    And zero at the bone.

  • A little road…

     

    Emily Dickinson

    A little road not made of man,
    Enabled of the eye,
    Accessible to thill of bee,
    Or cart of butterfly.

    If town it have, beyond itself,
    ‘T is that I cannot say;
    I only sigh,–no vehicle
    Bears me along that way.

  • Me! Come!…

     

    Emily Dickinson

    Me! Come! My dazzled face
    In such a shining place!

    Me! Hear! My foreign ear
    The sounds of welcome near!

    The saints shall meet
    Our bashful feet.

    My holiday shall be
    That they remember me;

    My paradise, the fame
    That they pronounce my name.

  • A bird came down…

     

    Emily Dickinson

    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,
    And he unrolled his feathers
    And rowed him softer home

    Than oars divide the ocean,
    Too silver for a seam,
    Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
    Leap, splashless, as they swim.