Emily Dickinson - Dickinson - The Complete Works

By and by the boldest stole out of his covert,

To see if time was there.

Nature was in her beryl apron,

Mixing fresher air.

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The rat is the concisest tenant.

He pays no rent, —

Repudiates the obligation,

On schemes intent.

Balking our wit

To sound or circumvent,

Hate cannot harm

A foe so reticent.

Neither decree

Prohibits him,

Lawful as

Equilibrium.

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Frequently the woods are pink,

Frequently are brown;

Frequently the hills undress

Behind my native town.

Oft a head is crested

I was wont to see,

And as oft a cranny

Where it used to be.

And the earth, they tell me,

On its axis turned, —

Wonderful rotation

By but twelve performed!

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The wind begun to rock the grass

With threatening tunes and low, —

He flung a menace at the earth,

A menace at the sky.

The leaves unhooked themselves from trees

And started all abroad;

The dust did scoop itself like hands

And throw away the road.

The wagons quickened on the streets,

The thunder hurried slow;

The lightning showed a yellow beak,

And then a livid claw.

The birds put up the bars to nests,

The cattle fled to barns;

There came one drop of giant rain,

And then, as if the hands

That held the dams had parted hold,

The waters wrecked the sky,

But overlooked my father's house,

Just quartering a tree.

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South winds jostle them,

Bumblebees come,

Hover, hesitate,

Drink, and are gone.

Butterflies pause

On their passage Cashmere;

I, softly plucking,

Present them here!

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Where ships of purple gently toss

On seas of daffodil,

Fantastic sailors mingle,

And then — the wharf is still.

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She sweeps with many-colored brooms,

And leaves the shreds behind;

Oh, housewife in the evening west,

Come back, and dust the pond!

You dropped a purple ravelling in,

You dropped an amber thread;

And now you 've littered all the East

With duds of emerald!

And still she plies her spotted brooms,

And still the aprons fly,

Till brooms fade softly into stars —

And then I come away.

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Like mighty footlights burned the red

At bases of the trees, —

The far theatricals of day

Exhibiting to these.

'T was universe that did applaud

While, chiefest of the crowd,

Enabled by his royal dress,

Myself distinguished God.

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Bring me the sunset in a cup,

Reckon the morning's flagons up,

And say how many dew;

Tell me how far the morning leaps,

Tell me what time the weaver sleeps

Who spun the breadths of blue!

Write me how many notes there be

In the new robin's ecstasy

Among astonished boughs;

How many trips the tortoise makes,

How many cups the bee partakes, —

The debauchee of dews!

Also, who laid the rainbow's piers,

Also, who leads the docile spheres

By withes of supple blue?

Whose fingers string the stalactite,

Who counts the wampum of the night,

To see that none is due?

Who built this little Alban house

And shut the windows down so close

My spirit cannot see?

Who 'll let me out some gala day,

With implements to fly away,

Passing pomposity?

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Blazing in gold and quenching in purple,

Leaping like leopards to the sky,

Then at the feet of the old horizon

Laying her spotted face, to die;

Stooping as low as the otter's window,

Touching the roof and tinting the barn,

Kissing her bonnet to the meadow, —

And the juggler of day is gone!

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Farther in summer than the birds,

Pathetic from the grass,

A minor nation celebrates

Its unobtrusive mass.

No ordinance is seen,

So gradual the grace,

A pensive custom it becomes,

Enlarging loneliness.

Antiquest felt at noon

When August, burning low,

Calls forth this spectral canticle,

Repose to typify.

Remit as yet no grace,

No furrow on the glow,

Yet a druidic difference

Enhances nature now.

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As imperceptibly as grief

The summer lapsed away, —

Too imperceptible, at last,

To seem like perfidy.

A quietness distilled,

As twilight long begun,

Or Nature, spending with herself

Sequestered afternoon.

The dusk drew earlier in,

The morning foreign shone, —

A courteous, yet harrowing grace,

As guest who would be gone.

And thus, without a wing,

Or service of a keel,

Our summer made her light escape

Into the beautiful.

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It can't be summer, — that got through;

It 's early yet for spring;

There 's that long town of white to cross

Before the blackbirds sing.

It can't be dying, — it's too rouge, —

The dead shall go in white.

So sunset shuts my question down

With clasps of chrysolite.

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The gentian weaves her fringes,

The maple's loom is red.

My departing blossoms

Obviate parade.

A brief, but patient illness,

An hour to prepare;

And one, below this morning,

Is where the angels are.

It was a short procession, —

The bobolink was there,

An aged bee addressed us,

And then we knelt in prayer.

We trust that she was willing, —

We ask that we may be.

Summer, sister, seraph,

Let us go with thee!

In the name of the bee

And of the butterfly

And of the breeze, amen!

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God made a little gentian;

It tried to be a rose

And failed, and all the summer laughed.

But just before the snows

There came a purple creature

That ravished all the hill;

And summer hid her forehead,

And mockery was still.

The frosts were her condition;

The Tyrian would not come

Until the North evoked it.

"Creator! shall I bloom?"

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Besides the autumn poets sing,

A few prosaic days

A little this side of the snow

And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,

A few ascetic eyes, —

Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod,

And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.

Still is the bustle in the brook,

Sealed are the spicy valves;

Mesmeric fingers softly touch

The eyes of many elves.

Perhaps a squirrel may remain,

My sentiments to share.

Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,

Thy windy will to bear!

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