Poems by Emily Dickinson, Third Series
Эмили Дикинсон




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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