Emily Dickinson - Dickinson - The Complete Works

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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.

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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

The same amounts remain.

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Forbidden fruit a flavor has

That lawful orchards mocks;

How luscious lies the pea within

The pod that Duty locks!

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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!

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A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day.

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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 invest existence with a stately air,

Needs but to remember

That the acorn there

Is the egg of forests

For the upper air!

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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!

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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.

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How still the bells in steeples stand,

Till, swollen with the sky,

They leap upon their silver feet

In frantic melody!

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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'!

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Could mortal lip divine

The undeveloped freight

Of a delivered syllable,

'T would crumble with the weight.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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Who has not found the heaven below

Will fail of it above.

God's residence is next to mine,

His furniture is love.

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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.

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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. — 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.

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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!

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Few get enough, — enough is one;

To that ethereal throng

Have not each one of us the right

To stealthily belong?

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Upon the gallows hung a wretch,

Too sullied for the hell

To which the law entitled him.

As nature's curtain fell