Emily Dickinson - Dickinson - The Complete Works

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!

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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,

But sequence ravelled out of reach

Like balls upon a floor.

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The reticent volcano keeps

His never slumbering plan;

Confided are his projects pink

To no precarious man.

If nature will not tell the tale

Jehovah told to her,

Can human nature not survive

Without a listener?

Admonished by her buckled lips

Let every babbler be.

The only secret people keep

Is Immortality.

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If recollecting were forgetting,

Then I remember not;

And if forgetting, recollecting,

How near I had forgot!

And if to miss were merry,

And if to mourn were gay,

How very blithe the fingers

That gathered these to-day!

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The farthest thunder that I heard

Was nearer than the sky,

And rumbles still, though torrid noons

Have lain their missiles by.

The lightning that preceded it

Struck no one but myself,

But I would not exchange the bolt

For all the rest of life.

Indebtedness to oxygen

The chemist may repay,

But not the obligation

To electricity.

It founds the homes and decks the days,

And every clamor bright

Is but the gleam concomitant

Of that waylaying light.

The thought is quiet as a flake, —

A crash without a sound;

How life's reverberation

Its explanation found!

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On the bleakness of my lot

Bloom I strove to raise.

Late, my acre of a rock

Yielded grape and maize.

Soil of flint if steadfast tilled

Will reward the hand;

Seed of palm by Lybian sun

Fructified in sand.

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A door just opened on a street —

I, lost, was passing by —

An instant's width of warmth disclosed,

And wealth, and company.

The door as sudden shut, and I,

I, lost, was passing by, —

Lost doubly, but by contrast most,

Enlightening misery.

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Are friends delight or pain?

Could bounty but remain

Riches were good.

But if they only stay

Bolder to fly away,

Riches are sad.

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Ashes denote that fire was;

Respect the grayest pile

For the departed creature's sake

That hovered there awhile.

Fire exists the first in light,

And then consolidates, —

Only the chemist can disclose

Into what carbonates.

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Fate slew him, but he did not drop;

She felled — he did not fall —

Impaled him on her fiercest stakes —

He neutralized them all.

She stung him, sapped his firm advance,

But, when her worst was done,

And he, unmoved, regarded her,

Acknowledged him a man.

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Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

For the one ship that struts the shore

Many's the gallant, overwhelmed creature

Nodding in navies nevermore.

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I measure every grief I meet

With analytic eyes;

I wonder if it weighs like mine,

Or has an easier size.

I wonder if they bore it long,

Or did it just begin?

I could not tell the date of mine,

It feels so old a pain.

I wonder if it hurts to live,

And if they have to try,

And whether, could they choose between,

They would not rather die.

I wonder if when years have piled —

Some thousands — on the cause

Of early hurt, if such a lapse

Could give them any pause;

Or would they go on aching still

Through centuries above,

Enlightened to a larger pain

By contrast with the love.

The grieved are many, I am told;

The reason deeper lies, —

Death is but one and comes but once,

And only nails the eyes.

There's grief of want, and grief of cold, —

A sort they call 'despair;'

There's banishment from native eyes,

In sight of native air.

And though I may not guess the kind

Correctly, yet to me

A piercing comfort it affords

In passing Calvary,

To note the fashions of the cross,

Of those that stand alone,

Still fascinated to presume

That some are like my own.

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I have a king who does not speak;

So, wondering, thro' the hours meek

I trudge the day away,—

Half glad when it is night and sleep,

If, haply, thro' a dream to peep

In parlors shut by day.

And if I do, when morning comes,

It is as if a hundred drums

Did round my pillow roll,

And shouts fill all my childish sky,

And bells keep saying 'victory'

From steeples in my soul!

And if I don't, the little Bird

Within the Orchard is not heard,

And I omit to pray,

'Father, thy will be done' to-day,

For my will goes the other way,

And it were perjury!

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It dropped so low in my regard

I heard it hit the ground,

And go to pieces on the stones

At bottom of my mind;

Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less

Than I reviled myself

For entertaining plated wares

Upon my silver shelf.

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To lose one's faith surpasses

The loss of an estate,

Because estates can be

Replenished, — faith cannot.

Inherited with life,

Belief but once can be;

Annihilate a single clause,

And Being's beggary.

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I had a daily bliss

I half indifferent viewed,

Till sudden I perceived it stir, —

It grew as I pursued,

Till when, around a crag,

It wasted from my sight,

Enlarged beyond my utmost scope,

I learned its sweetness right.

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I worked for chaff, and earning wheat

Was haughty and betrayed.

What right had fields to arbitrate

In matters ratified?

I tasted wheat, — and hated chaff,

And thanked the ample friend;

Wisdom is more becoming viewed

At distance than at hand.

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Life, and Death, and Giants

Such as these, are still.

Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill,

Beetle at the candle,

Or a fife's small fame,

Maintain by accident

That they proclaim.

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Our lives are Swiss, —

So still, so cool,

Till, some odd afternoon,

The Alps neglect their curtains,

And we look farther on.