Collected Poems

by Emily Dickinson

They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars, Like petals from a rose, When suddenly across the June A wind with fingers goes.

One need not be a chamber to be haunted, One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing Material place. Far safer, of a midnight meeting External ghost, Than an interior confronting That whiter host. Far safer through an Abbey gallop, The stones achase, Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed, Should startle most; Assassin, hid in our apartment, Be horror’s least. The prudent carries a revolver, He bolts the door, O’erlooking a superior spectre More near.

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.

I felt a funeral in my brain, And mourners, to and fro, Kept treading, treading, till it seemed That sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, A service like a drum Kept beating, beating, till I thought My mind was going numb. And then I heard them lift a box, And creak across my soul

With those same boots of lead, again. Then space began to toll As all the heavens were a bell, And Being but an ear, And I and silence some strange race, Wrecked, solitary, here.

I breathed enough to learn the trick, And now, removed from air, I simulate the breath so well, That one, to be quite sure The lungs are stirless, must descend Among the cunning cells, And touch the pantomime himself. How cool the bellows feels!

And then the windows failed, and then I could not see to see.

Water is taught by thirst; Land, by the oceans passed; Transport, by throe; Peace, by its battles told; Love, by memorial mould; Birds, by the snow.

Exhilaration is the Breeze That lifts us from the ground, And leaves us in another place Whose statement is not found; Returns us not, but after time We soberly descend, A little newer for the term Upon enchanted ground.

The blunder is to estimate, — “Eternity is Then,” We say, as of a station. Meanwhile he is so near, He joins me in my ramble, Divides abode with me, No friend have I that so persists As this Eternity.

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.

I think that the root of the Wind is Water, It would not sound so deep Were it a firmamental product, Airs no Oceans keep — Mediterranean intonations, To a Current’s ear There is a maritime conviction In the atmosphere.

’T was comfort in her dying room To hear the living clock, A short relief to have the wind Walk boldly up and knock, Diversion from the dying theme To hear the children play, But wrong, the mere That these could live, — And This of ours must die!

I watched her face to see which way She took the awful news, Whether she died before she heard — Or in protracted bruise Remained a few short years with us, Each heavier than the last — A further afternoon to fail, As Flower at fall of Frost.

The Look of Thee, what is it like? Hast thou a hand or foot, Or mansion of Identity, And what is thy Pursuit? Thy fellows, — are they Realms or Themes? Hast thou Delight or Fear Or Longing, — and is that for us Or values more severe? Let change transfuse all other traits, Enact all other blame, But deign this least certificate — That thou shalt be the same.

His Cheek is his Biographer — As long as he can blush, Perdition is Opprobrium; Past that, he sins in peace. Thief

munificence;

Munificence- interesting word

Had this one day not been, Or could it cease to be — How smitten, how superfluous Were every other day! Lest Love should value less What Loss would value more, Had it the stricken privilege — It cherishes before.

That she forgot me was the least, I felt it second pain, That I was worthy to forget Was most I thought upon. Faithful, was all that I could boast, But Constancy became, To her, by her innominate, A something like a shame.

Safe Despair it is that raves, Agony is frugal, Puts itself severe away For its own perusal. Garrisoned no Soul can be In the front of Trouble, Love is one, not aggregate, Nor is Dying double.

The Face we choose to miss, Be it but for a day — As absent as a hundred years When it has rode away.

To pile like Thunder to its close, Then crumble grand away, While everything created hid — This would be Poetry: Or Love, — the two coeval came — We both and neither prove, Experience either, and consume — For none see God and live.

The Stars are old, that stood for me — The West a little worn, Yet newer glows the only Gold I ever cared to earn — Presuming on that lone result Her infinite disdain,

But vanquished her with my defeat, ’T was Victory was slain.