Emily Dickinson - Dickinson - The Complete Works

Italy stands the other side,

While, like a guard between,

The solemn Alps,

The siren Alps,

Forever intervene!

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Remembrance has a rear and front, —

'T is something like a house;

It has a garret also

For refuse and the mouse,

Besides, the deepest cellar

That ever mason hewed;

Look to it, by its fathoms

Ourselves be not pursued.

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To hang our head ostensibly,

And subsequent to find

That such was not the posture

Of our immortal mind,

Affords the sly presumption

That, in so dense a fuzz,

You, too, take cobweb attitudes

Upon a plane of gauze!

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The brain is wider than the sky,

For, put them side by side,

The one the other will include

With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,

For, hold them, blue to blue,

The one the other will absorb,

As sponges, buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of God,

For, lift them, pound for pound,

And they will differ, if they do,

As syllable from sound.

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The bone that has no marrow;

What ultimate for that?

It is not fit for table,

For beggar, or for cat.

A bone has obligations,

A being has the same;

A marrowless assembly

Is culpabler than shame.

But how shall finished creatures

A function fresh obtain? —

Old Nicodemus' phantom

Confronting us again!

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The past is such a curious creature,

To look her in the face

A transport may reward us,

Or a disgrace.

Unarmed if any meet her,

I charge him, fly!

Her rusty ammunition

Might yet reply!

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To help our bleaker parts

Salubrious hours are given,

Which if they do not fit for earth

Drill silently for heaven.

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What soft, cherubic creatures

These gentlewomen are!

One would as soon assault a plush

Or violate a star.

Such dimity convictions,

A horror so refined

Of freckled human nature,

Of Deity ashamed, —

It's such a common glory,

A fisherman's degree!

Redemption, brittle lady,

Be so, ashamed of thee.

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Who never wanted, — maddest joy

Remains to him unknown:

The banquet of abstemiousness

Surpasses that of wine.

Within its hope, though yet ungrasped

Desire's perfect goal,

No nearer, lest reality

Should disenthrall thy soul.

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It might be easier

To fail with land in sight,

Than gain my blue peninsula

To perish of delight.

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You cannot put a fire out;

A thing that can ignite

Can go, itself, without a fan

Upon the slowest night.

You cannot fold a flood

And put it in a drawer, —

Because the winds would find it out,

And tell your cedar floor.

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A modest lot, a fame petite,

A brief campaign of sting and sweet

Is plenty! Is enough!

A sailor's business is the shore,

A soldier's — balls. Who asketh more

Must seek the neighboring life!

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Is bliss, then, such abyss

I must not put my foot amiss

For fear I spoil my shoe?

I'd rather suit my foot

Than save my boot,

For yet to buy another pair

Is possible

At any fair.

But bliss is sold just once;

The patent lost

None buy it any more.

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I stepped from plank to plank

So slow and cautiously;

The stars about my head I felt,

About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next

Would be my final inch, —

This gave me that precarious gait

Some call experience.

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One day is there of the series

Termed Thanksgiving day,

Celebrated part at table,

Part in memory.

Neither patriarch nor pussy,

I dissect the play;

Seems it, to my hooded thinking,

Reflex holiday.

Had there been no sharp subtraction

From the early sum,

Not an acre or a caption

Where was once a room,

Not a mention, whose small pebble

Wrinkled any bay, —

Unto such, were such assembly,

'T were Thanksgiving day.

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Softened by Time's consummate plush,

How sleek the woe appears

That threatened childhood's citadel

And undermined the years!

Bisected now by bleaker griefs,

We envy the despair

That devastated childhood's realm,

So easy to repair.

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Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,

Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,

Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,

Not to partake thy passion, my humility.

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My worthiness is all my doubt,

His merit all my fear,

Contrasting which, my qualities

Do lowlier appear;

Lest I should insufficient prove

For his beloved need,

The chiefest apprehension

Within my loving creed.

So I, the undivine abode

Of his elect content,

Conform my soul as 't were a church

Unto her sacrament.

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Love is anterior to life,

Posterior to death,

Initial of creation, and

The exponent of breath.

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