Emily Dickinson - Dickinson - The Complete Works

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Good night! which put the candle out?

A jealous zephyr, not a doubt.

Ah! friend, you little knew

How long at that celestial wick

The angels labored diligent;

Extinguished, now, for you!

It might have been the lighthouse spark

Some sailor, rowing in the dark,

Had importuned to see!

It might have been the waning lamp

That lit the drummer from the camp

To purer reveille!

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When I hoped I feared,

Since I hoped I dared;

Everywhere alone

As a church remain;

Spectre cannot harm,

Serpent cannot charm;

He deposes doom,

Who hath suffered him.

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A deed knocks first at thought,

And then it knocks at will.

That is the manufacturing spot,

And will at home and well.

It then goes out an act,

Or is entombed so still

That only to the ear of God

Its doom is audible.

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Mine enemy is growing old, —

I have at last revenge.

The palate of the hate departs;

If any would avenge, —

Let him be quick, the viand flits,

It is a faded meat.

Anger as soon as fed is dead;

'T is starving makes it fat.

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Remorse is memory awake,

Her companies astir, —

A presence of departed acts

At window and at door.

It's past set down before the soul,

And lighted with a match,

Perusal to facilitate

Of its condensed despatch.

Remorse is cureless, — the disease

Not even God can heal;

For 't is his institution, —

The complement of hell.

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The body grows outside, —

The more convenient way, —

That if the spirit like to hide,

Its temple stands alway

Ajar, secure, inviting;

It never did betray

The soul that asked its shelter

In timid honesty.

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Undue significance a starving man attaches

To food

Far off; he sighs, and therefore hopeless,

And therefore good.

Partaken, it relieves indeed, but proves us

That spices fly

In the receipt. It was the distance

Was savory.

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Heart not so heavy as mine,

Wending late home,

As it passed my window

Whistled itself a tune, —

A careless snatch, a ballad,

A ditty of the street;

Yet to my irritated ear

An anodyne so sweet,

It was as if a bobolink,

Sauntering this way,

Carolled and mused and carolled,

Then bubbled slow away.

It was as if a chirping brook

Upon a toilsome way

Set bleeding feet to minuets

Without the knowing why.

To-morrow, night will come again,

Weary, perhaps, and sore.

Ah, bugle, by my window,

I pray you stroll once more!

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I many times thought peace had come,

When peace was far away;

As wrecked men deem they sight the land

At centre of the sea,

And struggle slacker, but to prove,

As hopelessly as I,

How many the fictitious shores

Before the harbor lie.

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Unto my books so good to turn

Far ends of tired days;

It half endears the abstinence,

And pain is missed in praise.

As flavors cheer retarded guests

With banquetings to be,

So spices stimulate the time

Till my small library.

It may be wilderness without,

Far feet of failing men,

But holiday excludes the night,

And it is bells within.

I thank these kinsmen of the shelf;

Their countenances bland

Enamour in prospective,

And satisfy, obtained.

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This merit hath the worst, —

It cannot be again.

When Fate hath taunted last

And thrown her furthest stone,

The maimed may pause and breathe,

And glance securely round.

The deer invites no longer

Than it eludes the hound.

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I had been hungry all the years;

My noon had come, to dine;

I, trembling, drew the table near,

And touched the curious wine.

'T was this on tables I had seen,

When turning, hungry, lone,

I looked in windows, for the wealth

I could not hope to own.

I did not know the ample bread,

'T was so unlike the crumb

The birds and I had often shared

In Nature's dining-room.

The plenty hurt me, 't was so new, —

Myself felt ill and odd,

As berry of a mountain bush

Transplanted to the road.

Nor was I hungry; so I found

That hunger was a way

Of persons outside windows,

The entering takes away.

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I gained it so,

By climbing slow,

By catching at the twigs that grow

Between the bliss and me.

It hung so high,

As well the sky

Attempt by strategy.

I said I gained it, —

This was all.

Look, how I clutch it,

Lest it fall,

And I a pauper go;

Unfitted by an instant's grace

For the contented beggar's face

I wore an hour ago.

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To learn the transport by the pain,

As blind men learn the sun;

To die of thirst, suspecting

That brooks in meadows run;

To stay the homesick, homesick feet

Upon a foreign shore

Haunted by native lands, the while,

And blue, beloved air —

This is the sovereign anguish,

This, the signal woe!

These are the patient laureates

Whose voices, trained below,

Ascend in ceaseless carol,

Inaudible, indeed,

To us, the duller scholars

Of the mysterious bard!

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I years had been from home,

And now, before the door,

I dared not open, lest a face

I never saw before

Stare vacant into mine

And ask my business there.

My business, — just a life I left,

Was such still dwelling there?

I fumbled at my nerve,

I scanned the windows near;

The silence like an ocean rolled,

And broke against my ear.

I laughed a wooden laugh

That I could fear a door,

Who danger and the dead had faced,

But never quaked before.

I fitted to the latch

My hand, with trembling care,

Lest back the awful door should spring,

And leave me standing there.

I moved my fingers off

As cautiously as glass,

And held my ears, and like a thief

Fled gasping from the house.

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Prayer is the little implement

Through which men reach

Where presence is denied them.

They fling their speech

By means of it in God's ear;

If then He hear,

This sums the apparatus

Comprised in prayer.

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I know that he exists

Somewhere, in silence.

He has hid his rare life