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.

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. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!

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

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.

I had no cause to be awake, My best was gone to sleep, And morn a new politeness took, And failed to wake them up, But called the others clear, And passed their curtains by. Sweet morning, when I over-sleep, Knock, recollect, for me!

Time is a test of trouble, But not a remedy.