Poems: Three Series, Complete

by Emily Dickinson

LII. To learn the transport by the pain, As blind men learn the sun; To die of thirst, suspecting That brooks in meadows run; To stay the homesick, homesick feet Upon a foreign shore Haunted by native lands, the while, And blue, beloved air — This is the sovereign anguish, This, the signal woe! These are the patient laureates Whose voices, trained below, Ascend in ceaseless carol, Inaudible, indeed, To us, the duller scholars Of the mysterious bard!

LIII. RETURNING. I years had been from home, And now, before the door, I dared not open, lest a face I never saw before Stare vacant into mine And ask my business there. My business, — just a life I left, Was such still dwelling there? I fumbled at my nerve, I scanned the windows near; The silence like an ocean rolled, And broke against my ear. I laughed a wooden laugh That I could fear a door, Who danger and the dead had faced, But never quaked before. I fitted to the latch My hand, with trembling care, Lest back the awful door should spring, And leave me standing there. I moved my fingers off As cautiously as glass, And held my ears, and like a thief Fled gasping from the house.

favorite. this poem embodies the pain of change.

XI. THE LOVERS. The rose did caper on her cheek, Her bodice rose and fell, Her pretty speech, like drunken men, Did stagger pitiful. Her fingers fumbled at her work, — Her needle would not go; What ailed so smart a little maid It puzzled me to know, Till opposite I spied a cheek That bore another rose; Just opposite, another speech That like the drunkard goes; A vest that, like the bodice, danced To the immortal tune, — Till those two troubled little clocks Ticked softly into one.

XIII. The moon is distant from the sea, And yet with amber hands She leads him, docile as a boy, Along appointed sands. He never misses a degree; Obedient to her eye, He comes just so far toward the town, Just so far goes away. Oh, Signor, thine the amber hand, And mine the distant sea, — Obedient to the least command Thine eyes impose on me.

XV. THE LOST JEWEL. I held a jewel in my fingers And went to sleep. The day was warm, and winds were prosy; I said: "'T will keep." I woke and chid my honest fingers, — The gem was gone; And now an amethyst remembrance Is all I own.

favorite.

I. MOTHER NATURE. Nature, the gentlest mother, Impatient of no child, The feeblest or the waywardest, — Her admonition mild In forest and the hill By traveller is heard, Restraining rampant squirrel Or too impetuous bird. How fair her conversation, A summer afternoon, — Her household, her assembly; And when the sun goes down Her voice among the aisles Incites the timid prayer Of the minutest cricket, The most unworthy flower. When all the children sleep She turns as long away As will suffice to light her lamps; Then, bending from the sky With infinite affection And infiniter care, Her golden finger on her lip, Wills silence everywhere.

A pleader, a dissembler, An epicure, a thief, — Betimes an oratorio, An ecstasy in chief;

The trusting woods? The unsuspecting trees Brought out their burrs and mosses

XXVIII.

I know a place where summer strives With such a practised frost, She each year leads her daisies back, Recording briefly, "Lost." But when the south wind stirs the pools And struggles in the lanes, Her heart misgives her for her vow, And she pours soft refrains Into the lap of adamant, And spices, and the dew, That stiffens quietly to quartz, Upon her amber shoe.

Thine is the stillest night, Thine the securest fold; Too near thou art for seeking thee, Too tender to be told.

A death-blow is a life-blow to some Who, till they died, did not alive become; Who, had they lived, had died, but when They died, vitality begun.

As by the dead we love to sit, Become so wondrous dear, As for the lost we grapple, Though all the rest are here, — In broken mathematics We estimate our prize, Vast, in its fading ratio, To our penurious eyes!