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Poems by Emily Dickinson, Third Series

Emily Dickinson
Poems by Emily Dickinson, Third Series

MABEL LOOMIS TODD

    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

POEMS

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,

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