Emily Dickinson - Dickinson - The Complete Works

Emily Dickinson

580+ Poems & Verses, Including Biography & Letters

e-artnow, 2022

Contact: info@e-artnow.org

EAN 4066338120434

Poems: First Series

Poems: Second Series

Poems: Third Series

The Single Hound

The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson

Table of Contents Table of Contents Poems: First Series Poems: Second Series Poems: Third Series The Single Hound The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson

PREFACE

BOOK I.—LIFE.

I. Success

II. "Our share of night to bear"

III. Rouge et Noir

IV. Rouge gagne

V. "Glee! the storm is over"

VI. "If I can stop one heart from breaking"

VII. Almost

VIII. "A wounded deer leaps highest"

IX. "The heart asks pleasure first"

X. In a Library

XI. "Much madness is divinest sense"

XII. "I asked no other thing"

XIII. Exclusion

XIV. The Secret

XV. The Lonely House

XVI. "To fight aloud is very brave"

XVII. Dawn

XVIII. The Book of Martyrs

XIX. The Mystery of Pain

XX. "I taste a liquor never brewed"

XXI. A Book

XXII. "I had no time to hate, because"

XXIII Unreturning

XXIV. Whether my bark went down at sea"

XXV. "Belshazzar had a letter"

XXVI. "The brain within its groove"

BOOK II.—LOVE.

I. Mine

II. Bequest

III. "Alter? When the hills do"

IV. Suspense

V. Surrender

VI. "If you were coming in the fall"

VII. With a Flower

VIII. Proof

IX. “Have you got a brook in your little heart?”

X. Transplanted

XI. The Outlet

XII. In Vain

XIII Renunciation

XIV. Love's Baptism

XV. Resurrection

XVI. Apocalypse

XVII. The Wife

XVIII. Apotheosis

BOOK III.—NATURE

I. “New feet within my garden go”

II. May-Flower

III. Why?

IV. “Perhaps you ’d like to buy a flower”

V. “The pedigree of honey”

VI. A Service of Song

VII. “The bee is not afraid of me”

VIII. Summer's Armies

IX. The Grass

X. "A little road not made of man"

XI. Summer Shower

XII. Psalm of the Day

XIII. The Sea of Sunset

XIV. Purple Clover

XV. The Bee

XVI. "Presentiment is that long shadow"

XVII. "As children bid the guest good-night"

XVIII. "Angels in the early morning"

XIX. "So bashful when I spied her"

XX. Two Worlds

XXI. The Mountain

XXII. A Day

XXIII. "The butterfly's assumption-gown"

XXIV. The Wind

XXIV. Death and Life

XXVI. "'T was later when the summer went"

XXVII. Indian Summer

XXVIII. Autumn

XXIX. Beclouded

XXX. The Hemlock

XXXI. "There's a certain slant of light"

BOOK IV. TIME AND ETERNITY

I. "One dignity delays for all"

II. Too late

III. Astra Castra

IV. "Safe in their alabaster chambers"

V. "On this long storm the rainbow rose"

VI. From the Chrysalis

VII. Setting Sail

VIII. "Look back on time with kindly eyes"

IX. "A train went through a burial gate"

X. "I died for beauty, but was scarce"

XI. Troubled about many things

XII. Real

XIII. The Funeral

XIV. "I went to thank her"

XV. "I've seen a dying eye"

XVI. Refuge

XVII. "I never saw a moor"

XVIII. Playmates

XIX. "To know just how he suffered"

XX. "The last night that she lived"

XXI. The First Lesson

XXII. "The bustle in the house"

XXIII. "I reason, earth is short"

XXIV. "Afraid? Of whom am I afraid?"

XXV. Dying

XXVI. "Two swimmers wrestled on a spar"

XXVII. The Chariot

XXVIII. "She went as quiet as the dew"

XXIX. Resurgam

XXX. "Except to heave she is nought"

XXXI. "Death is a dialogue between"

XXXII. "It was too late for man"

XXXIII. Along the Potomac

XXXIV. "The daisy follows soft the Sun"

XXXV. Emancipation

XXXVI. Lost

XXXVII. "If I shouldn't be alive"

XXXVIII. "Sleep is supposed to be"

XXXIX. "I shall know why when time is over"

XL. "I never lost as much but twice"

Table of Contents

The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called "the Poetry of the Portfolio,"—something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind. Such verse must inevitably forfeit whatever advantage lies in the discipline of public criticism and the enforced conformity to accepted ways. On the other hand, it may often gain something through the habit of freedom and the unconventional utterance of daring thoughts. In the case of the present author, there was absolutely no choice in the matter; she must write thus, or not at all. A recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father's grounds, she habitually concealed her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends; and it was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or four poems. Yet she wrote verses in great abundance; and though brought curiously indifferent to all conventional rules, had yet a rigorous literary standard of her own, and often altered a word many times to suit an ear which had its own tenacious fastidiousness.

Miss Dickinson was born in Amherst, Mass., Dec. 10, 1830, and died there May 15, 1886. Her father, Hon. Edward Dickinson, was the leading lawyer of Amherst, and was treasurer of the well-known college there situated. It was his custom once a year to hold a large reception at his house, attended by all the families connected with the institution and by the leading people of the town. On these occasions his daughter Emily emerged from her wonted retirement and did her part as gracious hostess; nor would any one have known from her manner, I have been told, that this was not a daily occurrence. The annual occasion once past, she withdrew again into her seclusion, and except for a very few friends was as invisible to the world as if she had dwelt in a nunnery. For myself, although I had corresponded with her for many years, I saw her but twice face to face, and brought away the impression of something as unique and remote as Undine or Mignon or Thekla.

This selection from her poems is published to meet the desire of her personal friends, and especially of her surviving sister. It is believed that the thoughtful reader will find in these pages a quality more suggestive of the poetry of William Blake than of anything to be elsewhere found,—flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame. They are here published as they were written, with very few and superficial changes; although it is fair to say that the titles have been assigned, almost invariably, by the editors. In many cases these verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed. In other cases, as in the few poems of shipwreck or of mental conflict, we can only wonder at the gift of vivid imagination by which this recluse woman can delineate, by a few touches, the very crises of physical or mental struggle. And sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain, sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the reader regret its sudden cessation. But the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight, uttered with an uneven vigor sometimes exasperating, seemingly wayward, but really unsought and inevitable. After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote in his earlier and better days, "No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought."