The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson Quotes

“We never know how high we are till we are called to rise. Then if we are true to form our statures touch the skies.”
― Emily Dickinson, Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.”
― emily dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“The sun just touched the morning;
The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Those who have not found the heaven below,
will fail of it above.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“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.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“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.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“The Brain—is wider than the Sky—”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“The Poets light but Lamps-
Themselves-go out-”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“The brain within its groove
Runs evenly and true;
But let a splinter swerve,
’T were easier for you
To put the water back
When floods have slit the hills,
And scooped a turnpike for themselves,
And blotted out the mills!”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Forever – is composed of Nows –
‘Tis not a different time –
Except for Infiniteness –
And Latitude of Home –”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“The Dark—felt beautiful—”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Down Time’s quaint stream
Without an oar,
We are enforced to sail,
Our Port—a secret—
Our Perchance—a gale.
What Skipper would
Incur the risk,
What Buccaneer would ride,
Without a surety from the wind
Or schedule of the tide?”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“To wander now is my abode;
To rest,—to rest would be
A privilege of hurricane
To memory and me.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“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?”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Experiment to me
Is every one I meet.
If it contain a kernel?
The figure of a nut
Presents upon a tree,
Equally plausibly;
But meat within is requisite,
To squirrels and to me.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“I had a daily bliss
I half indifferent viewed,
Till sudden I perceived it stir,—
It grew as I pursued,

Till when, around a crag,
It wasted from my sight,
Enlarged beyond my utmost scope,
I learned its sweetness right.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“They shut me up in Prose –
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet –
Because they liked me "still" –

Still! Could themself have peeped –
And seen my Brain – go round –
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason – in the Pound –”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Safe Despair it is that raves—
Agony is frugal.
Puts itself severe away
For its own perusal.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Come slowly, Eden!
Lips unused to thee,
Bashful, sip thy jasmines,
As the fainting bee,

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums,
Counts his nectars—enters,
And is lost in balms!”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Read, sweet, how others strove,
Till we are stouter;
What they renounced,
Till we are less afraid;
How many times they bore
The faithful witness,
Till we are helped,
As if a kingdom cared!

Read then of faith
That shone above the fagot;
Clear strains of hymn
The river could not drown;
Brave names of men
And celestial women,
Passed out of record
Into renown!”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“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!”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“A little road not made of man,
Enabled of the eye,
Accessible to thill of bee,
Or cart of butterfly.

If town it have, beyond itself,
’T is that I cannot say;
I only sigh,—no vehicle
Bears me along that way.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“It struck me every day
The lightning was as new
As if the cloud that instant slit
And let the fire through.
It burned me in the night,
It blistered in my dream;
It sickened fresh upon my sight
With every morning’s beam.
I thought that storm was brief,—
The maddest, quickest by;
But Nature lost the date of this,
And left it in the sky.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Of Course - I prayed -
And did God Care?
He cared as much as on the Air
A Bird - had stamped her foot -
And cried "Give Me" -
My Reason - Life -
I had not had - but for Yourself -
'Twere better Charity
To leave me in the Atom's Tomb -
Merry, and Nought, and gay, and numb -
Than this smart Misery.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches on the soul,
And sings the tune without words,
And never stops at all.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“The Hills erect their purple heads,
The Rivers lean to see—
Yet Man has not, of all the throng,
A curiosity.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“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 -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Sweet hours have perished here;
This is a mighty room;
Within its precincts hopes have played,—
Now shadows in the tomb.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson