Email support@poemanswers.com
Emily Dickinson 1830-
Born Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
Poet
A Narrow Fellow In The Grass
A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, did you not,
His notice sudden is.
The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at
your feet
And opens further on.
He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,
Have passed, I thought, a whip-
Unbraiding in the sun,
When, stooping to secure
it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;
But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero
at the bone.
A Bird Came Down
A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-
And ate the fellow, raw.
And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the
wall
To let a beetle pass.
He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,-
They looked like frightened
beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head
Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home
Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim.
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but
just Ourselves—
And Immortality.
We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the
fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—
Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my
Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely
visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—
Since then—'tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the
Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity—
A Light Exists In Spring
A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March
is scarcely here
A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human naturefeels.
It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.
Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes,
and we stay:
A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a
sacrament.
After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Toombs
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought
A Wooden way
Regardless
grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone
This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the
Snow
First-
I Cannot Live With You
I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf
The sexton keeps the key to,
Putting up
Our life, his porcelain,
Like a cup
Discarded of the housewife,
Quaint or broken;
A newer Sevres pleases,
Old ones crack.
I could not die with you,
For one must wait
To shut the other's gaze down,
You could
not.
And I, could I stand by
And see you freeze,
Without my right of frost,
Death's privilege?
Nor could I rise with you,
Because your face
Would put out Jesus'.
That new grace
Glow plain and foreign
On my homesick eye,
Except that you, than he
Shone closer
by.
They'd judge us -
For you served Heaven, you know
Or sought to;
I could not,
Because you saturated sight,
And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise.
And were you lost, I would be,
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame.
And were you saved,
And I condemned to be
Where you were not,
That self were hell
to me.
So we must keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale svustenance,
Despair!
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires
sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So
clear of Victory
As he defeated-
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst
agonized and clear!
Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart!
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-
This Is My Letter To The World
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,
The simple news that Nature
told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -
They'd banish us, you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong
day
To an admiring bog!