* * *
Poems by Emily Dickinson Third Series
Edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T.W. Higginson
BOOK I. -- LIFE.
I. Real Riches
II. Superiority to Fate
III. Hope
IV. Forbidden Fruit
V. Forbidden Fruit
VI. A Word
VII. "To venerate the simple days"
VIII. Life's Trades
IX. "Drowning is not so pitiful"
X. "How still the bells in steeples stand"
XI. "If the foolish call them 'flowers'"
XII. A Syllable
XIII. Parting
XIV. Aspiration
XV. The Inevitable
XVI. A Book
XVII. "Who has not found the heaven below"
XVIII. A Portrait
XIX. I had a Guinea Golden
XX. Saturday Afternoon
XXI. "Few get enough--enough is one"
XXII. "Upon the gallows hung a wretch"
XXIII. The Lost Thought
XXIV. Reticence
XXV. With Flowers
XXVI. "The farthest thunder that I heard"
XXVII. "On the bleakness of my lot"
XXVIII. Contrast
XXIX. Friends
XXX. Fire
XXXI. A Man
XXXII. Ventures
XXXIII. Griefs
XXXIV. "I have a king who does not speak"
XXXV. Disenchantment
XXXVI. Lost Faith
XXXVII. Lost Joy
XXXVIII. " I worked for chaff, and earning wheat"
XXXIX. "Life, and Death, and Giants"
XL. Alpine Glow
XLI. Remembrance
XLII. "To hang our head ostensibly"
XLIII. The Brain
XLIV. "The bone that has no marrow"
XLV. The Past
XLVI. "To help our bleaker parts"
XLVII. "What soft, cherubic creatures"
XLVIII. Desire
XLIX. Philosophy
L. Power
LI. "A modest lot, a fame petite"
LII. "Is bliss, then, such abyss"
LIII. Experience
LIV. Thanksgiving Day
LV. Childish Griefs
BOOK II. -- LOVE.
I. Consecration
II. Love's Humility
III. Love
IV. Satisfied
V. With a Flower
VI. Song
VII. Loyalty
VIII. "To lose thee, sweeter than to gain"
IX. "Poor little heart!"
X. Forgotten
XI. "I've got an arrow here"
XII. The Master
XIII. "Heart, we will forget him!"
XIV. "Father, I bring thee not myself"
XV. "We outgrow love, like other things"
XVI. "Not with a club the heart is broken"
XVII. Who?
XVIII. "He touched me, so I live to know"
XIX. Dreams
XX. Numen Lumen
XXI. Longing
XXII. Wedded
BOOK III. -- NATURE.
I. Nature's Changes
II. The Tulip
III. "A light exists in spring"
IV. The Waking Year
V. To March
VI. March
VII. Dawn
VIII. " A murmur in the trees to note"
IX. "Morning is the place for dew"
X. "To my quick ears the leaves conferred"
XI. A Rose
XII. "High from the earth I heard a bird"
XIII. Cobwebs
XIV. A Well
XV. "To make a prairie it takes a clover"
XVI. The Wind
XVII. "A dew sufficed itself"
XVIII. The Woodpecker
XIX. A Snake
XX. "Could I but ride indefinite"
XXII. The Bat
XXIII. The Balloon
XXIV. Evening
XXV. Cocoon
XXVI. Sunset
XXVII. Aurora
XXVIII. The Coming of Night
XXIX. Aftermath
BOOK IV. -- TIME AND ETERNITY.
I. "This world is not conclusion"
II. "We learn in the retreating"
III. "They say that 'time assuages'"
IV. "We cover thee, sweet face"
V. Ending
VI. "The stimulus, beyond the grave"
VII. "Given in marriage unto thee"
VIII. "That such have died enables us"
IX. "They won't frown always, -- some sweet day"
X. Immortality
XI. "The distance that the dead have gone"
XII. "How dare the robins sing"
XIII. Death
XIV. Unwarned
XV. "Each that we lose takes part of us"
XVI. "Not any higher stands the grave"
XVII. Asleep
XVIII. The Spirit
XIX. The Monument
XX. "Bless God, he went as soldiers"
XXI. "Immortal is an ample word"
XXII. "Where every bird is bold to go"
XXIII. "The grave my little cottage is"
XXIV. "This was in the white of the year"
XXV. "Sweet hours have perished here"
XXVI. "Me! Come! My dazzled face"
XXVII. Invisible
XXVIII. "I wish I knew that woman's name"
XXIX. Trying to Forget
XXX. "I felt a funeral in my brain"
XXXI. "I meant to find her when I came"
XXXII. Waiting
XXXIII. "A sickness of this world it most occassions"
XXXIV. "Superfluous were the sun"
XXXV. "So proud she was to die"
XXXVI. Farewell
XXXVII. "The dying need but little, dear"
XXXVIII. Dead
XXXIX. "The soul should always stand ajar"
XL. "Three weeks passed since I had seen her"
XLI. "I brethed enough to learn the trick"
XLII. "I wonder if the sepulchre"
XLIII. Joy in Death
XLIV. "If I may have it when it's dead"
XLV. "Before the ice is in the pools"
XLVI. Dying
XLVII. "Adrift! A little boat adrift!"
XLVIII. "There's been a death in the opposite house"
XLIX. "We never know we go, -- when we are going"
L. The Soul's Storm
LI. "Water is taught by thirst"
LII. Thirst
LIII. "A clock stopped -- not the mantel's"
LIV. Charlotte Brontë's Grave
LV. "A toad can die of light!"
LVI. "Far from love the Heavenly Father"
LVII. Sleeping
LVIII. Retrospect
LIX. Eternity This page copyright © 2000 Blackmask Online.
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 , 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, .
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
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.
AWORD 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 invent 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: 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,