Emily Dickinson - Dickinson - The Complete Works

Arcturus is his other name, —

I'd rather call him star!

It's so unkind of science

To go and interfere!

I pull a flower from the woods, —

A monster with a glass

Computes the stamens in a breath,

And has her in a class.

Whereas I took the butterfly

Aforetime in my hat,

He sits erect in cabinets,

The clover-bells forgot.

What once was heaven, is zenith now.

Where I proposed to go

When time's brief masquerade was done,

Is mapped, and charted too!

What if the poles should frisk about

And stand upon their heads!

I hope I 'm ready for the worst,

Whatever prank betides!

Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven 's changed!

I hope the children there

Won't be new-fashioned when I come,

And laugh at me, and stare!

I hope the father in the skies

Will lift his little girl, —

Old-fashioned, naughty, everything, —

Over the stile of pearl!

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An awful tempest mashed the air,

The clouds were gaunt and few;

A black, as of a spectre's cloak,

Hid heaven and earth from view.

The creatures chuckled on the roofs

And whistled in the air,

And shook their fists and gnashed their teeth.

And swung their frenzied hair.

The morning lit, the birds arose;

The monster's faded eyes

Turned slowly to his native coast,

And peace was Paradise!

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An everywhere of silver,

With ropes of sand

To keep it from effacing

The track called land.

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A bird came down the walk:

He did not know I saw;

He bit an angle-worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew

From a convenient grass,

And then hopped sidewise to the wall

To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes

That hurried all abroad, —

They looked like frightened beads, I thought;

He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,

I offered him a crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers

And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or butterflies, off banks of noon,

Leap, splashless, as they swim.

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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.

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The mushroom is the elf of plants,

At evening it is not;

At morning in a truffled hut

It stops upon a spot

As if it tarried always;

And yet its whole career

Is shorter than a snake's delay,

And fleeter than a tare.

'T is vegetation's juggler,

The germ of alibi;

Doth like a bubble antedate,

And like a bubble hie.

I feel as if the grass were pleased

To have it intermit;

The surreptitious scion

Of summer's circumspect.

Had nature any outcast face,

Could she a son contemn,

Had nature an Iscariot,

That mushroom, — it is him.

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There came a wind like a bugle;

It quivered through the grass,

And a green chill upon the heat

So ominous did pass

We barred the windows and the doors

As from an emerald ghost;

The doom's electric moccason

That very instant passed.

On a strange mob of panting trees,

And fences fled away,

And rivers where the houses ran

The living looked that day.

The bell within the steeple wild

The flying tidings whirled.

How much can come

And much can go,

And yet abide the world!

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A spider sewed at night

Without a light

Upon an arc of white.

If ruff it was of dame

Or shroud of gnome,

Himself, himself inform.

Of immortality

His strategy

Was physiognomy.

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I know a place where summer strives

With such a practised frost,

She each year leads her daisies back,

Recording briefly, "Lost."

But when the south wind stirs the pools

And struggles in the lanes,

Her heart misgives her for her vow,

And she pours soft refrains

Into the lap of adamant,

And spices, and the dew,

That stiffens quietly to quartz,

Upon her amber shoe.

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The one that could repeat the summer day

Were greater than itself, though he

Minutest of mankind might be.

And who could reproduce the sun,

At period of going down —

The lingering and the stain, I mean —

When Orient has been outgrown,

And Occident becomes unknown,

His name remain.

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The wind tapped like a tired man,

And like a host, "Come in,"

I boldly answered; entered then

My residence within

A rapid, footless guest,

To offer whom a chair

Were as impossible as hand

A sofa to the air.

No bone had he to bind him,

His speech was like the push

Of numerous humming-birds at once

From a superior bush.

His countenance a billow,

His fingers, if he pass,

Let go a music, as of tunes

Blown tremulous in glass.

He visited, still flitting;

Then, like a timid man,

Again he tapped — 't was flurriedly —

And I became alone.

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Nature rarer uses yellow

Than another hue;

Saves she all of that for sunsets, —

Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman,

Yellow she affords

Only scantly and selectly,

Like a lover's words.

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The leaves, like women, interchange

Sagacious confidence;

Somewhat of nods, and somewhat of

Portentous inference,

The parties in both cases

Enjoining secrecy, —

Inviolable compact

To notoriety.

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How happy is the little stone

That rambles in the road alone,

And doesn't care about careers,

And exigencies never fears;

Whose coat of elemental brown

A passing universe put on;

And independent as the sun,

Associates or glows alone,

Fulfilling absolute decree

In casual simplicity.

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It sounded as if the streets were running,

And then the streets stood still.

Eclipse was all we could see at the window,

And awe was all we could feel.