Collected Poems

by Emily Dickinson

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

He traverses familiar, As one should come to town And tell you all your dreams were true; He lived where dreams were born. His presence is enchantment, You beg him not to go;

Much madness is divinest sense To a discerning eye; Much sense the starkest madness.

Pain has an element of blank; It cannot recollect When it began, or if there were A day when it was not. It has no future but itself, Its infinite realms contain Its past, enlightened to perceive New periods of pain.

I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know.

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

I can wade grief, Whole pools of it, — I’m used to that. But the least push of joy Breaks up my feet, And I tip — drunken. Let no pebble smile, ’T was the new liquor, — That was all!

Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the culprit, — Life!

Earth would have been too much, I see, And heaven not enough for me;

Remorse is memory awake,

A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.

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!

Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.

You cannot fold a flood And put it in a drawer,

The robin is the one That interrupts the morn With hurried, few, express reports When March is scarcely on. The robin is the one That overflows the noon With her cherubic quantity, An April but begun. The robin is the one That speechless from her nest Submits that home and certainty And sanctity are best.

It sounded as if the streets were running, And then the streets stood still. Eclipse was all we could see at the window, And awe was all we could feel.

Pink, small, and punctual, Aromatic, low, Covert in April, Candid in May, Dear to the moss, Known by the knoll, Next to the robin In every human soul.

Auto-da-fê and judgment Are nothing to the bee; His separation from his rose To him seems misery.

Who knocks? That April! Lock the door! I will not be pursued! He stayed away a year, to call When I am occupied. But trifles look so trivial As soon as you have come, That blame is just as dear as praise And praise as mere as blame.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, — One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do If bees are few.

Could I but ride indefinite, As doth the meadow-bee, And visit only where I liked, And no man visit me, And flirt all day with buttercups, And marry whom I may, And dwell a little everywhere, Or better, run away With no police to follow, Or chase me if I do, Till I should jump peninsulas To get away from you,

The lower metres of the year, When nature’s laugh is done, — The Revelations of the book Whose Genesis is June.

It’s all I have to bring to-day, This, and my heart beside, This, and my heart, and all the fields, And all the meadows wide. Be sure you count, should I forget, — Some one the sun could tell, — This, and my heart, and all the bees Which in the clover dwell.

If certain, when this life was out, That yours and mine should be, I’d toss it yonder like a rind, And taste eternity.

I have no life but this, To lead it here; Nor any death, but lest Dispelled from there; Nor tie to earths to come, Nor action new, Except through this extent, The realm of you.

As by the dead we love to sit, Become so wondrous dear, As for the lost we grapple, Though all the rest are here, —

A book I have, a friend gave, Whose pencil, here and there, Had notched the place that pleased him, — At rest his fingers are. Now, when I read, I read not, For interrupting tears Obliterate the etchings Too costly for repairs.

She died, — this was the way she died; And when her breath was done, Took up her simple wardrobe And started for the sun. Her little figure at the gate The angels must have spied, Since I could never find her Upon the mortal side.

A throe upon the features A hurry in the breath, An ecstasy of parting Denominated “Death,” — An anguish at the mention, Which, when to patience grown, I’ve known permission given To rejoin its own.

They say that “time assuages,” — Time never did assuage; An actual suffering strengthens, As sinews do, with age. Time is a test of trouble, But not a remedy. If such it prove, it prove too There was no malady.

That is solemn we have ended, — Be it but a play, Or a glee among the garrets, Or a holiday, Or a leaving home; or later, Parting with a world We have understood, for better Still it be unfurled.

The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear; Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year. And then, that we have followed them We more than half suspect, So intimate have we become With their dear retrospect.

Each that we lose takes part of us; A crescent still abides, Which like the moon, some turbid night, Is summoned by the tides.

Immortal is an ample word When what we need is by, But when it leaves us for a time, ’T is a necessity. Of heaven above the firmest proof We fundamental know, Except for its marauding hand, It had been heaven below.

To wander now is my abode; To rest, — to rest would be A privilege of hurricane To memory and me.

Upon his dateless fame Our periods may lie, As stars that drop anonymous From an abundant sky.

So proud she was to die It made us all ashamed That what we cherished, so unknown To her desire seemed. So satisfied to go Where none of us should be, Immediately, that anguish stooped Almost to jealousy.

If I may have it when it’s dead I will contented be; If just as soon as breath is out It shall belong to me, Until they lock it in the grave, ’T is bliss I cannot weigh, For though they lock thee in the grave, Myself can hold the key. Think of it, lover! I and thee Permitted face to face to be; After a life, a death we’ll say, — For death was that, and this is thee.

The difference between despair And fear, is like the one Between the instant of a wreck, And when the wreck has been. The mind is smooth, — no motion — Contented as the eye Upon the forehead of a Bust, That knows it cannot see.

There is a solitude of space, A solitude of sea, A solitude of death, but these Society shall be, Compared with that profounder site, That polar privacy, A Soul admitted to Itself: Finite Infinity.

The props assist the house Until the house is built, And then the props withdraw — And adequate, erect, The house supports itself; Ceasing to recollect The auger and the carpenter. Just such a retrospect Hath the perfected life, A past of plank and nail, And slowness, — then the scaffolds drop — Affirming it a soul.

Nature is what we see, The Hill, the Afternoon — Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumble-bee, Nay — Nature is Heaven. Nature is what we hear, The Bobolink, the Sea — Thunder, the Cricket — Nay, — Nature is Harmony. Nature is what we know But have no art to say, So impotent our wisdom is To Her simplicity.

Beauty crowds me till I die, Beauty, mercy have on me! But if I expire today, Let it be in sight of thee.

The Hills erect their purple heads, The Rivers lean to see — Yet Man has not, of all the throng, A curiosity.

Lightly stepped a yellow star To its lofty place, Loosed the Moon her silver hat From her lustral face. All of evening softly lit As an astral hall — “Father,” I observed to Heaven, “You are punctual.”

That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love;