Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete

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! POEMS by EMILY DICKINSON Second Series Edited by two of her friends MABEL LOOMIS TODD and T.W. HIGGINSON 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 oone 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, I891. 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; --