Emily Dickinson | |||||||||||||
WILD NIGHTS! Wild Nights! Wild Nights! Were I with thee, Wild Nights should be Our luxury! Futile the winds To a heart in port, -- Done with the compass, Done with the chart! Rowing in Eden! Ah! the sea! Might I but moor To-night in Thee! |
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Click on the link for a biography of Emily Dickinson. Biography |
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HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS 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. THERE'S A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT There's a certain slant of light, On winter afternoons, That oppresses, like the weight Of cathedral tunes. Heavenly hurt it gives us; We can find no scar, But internal difference Where the meanings are. None may teach it anything, 'Tis the seal, despair,- An imperial affliction Sent us of the air. When it comes, the landscape listens, Shadows hold their breath; When it goes, 't is like the distance On the look of death. MY LETTER TO THE WORLD 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! IT'S ALL I HAVE TO BRING TODAY 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. |
A NARROW FELLOW IN THE GRASS 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. DEATH SETS A THING 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. LOVE IS ANTERIOR TO LIFE Love is anterior to life, Posterior to death, Initial of creation, and The exponent of breath. |
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