Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
American poet.
THE SWEETS of Pillage can be known
To no one but the Thief,
Compassion for Integrity
Is his divinest Grief.
IT tossed and tossed,—
A little brig I knew,—
O’ertook by blast,
It spun and spun,
And groped delirious, for morn.
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires a sorest need.
WHO has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God’s residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.
NO rack can torture me,
My soul ’s at liberty.
Behind this mortal bone
There knits a bolder one
God preaches, a noted Clergyman —
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last—
I’m going, all along.
I NEVER saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
THE FACE we choose to miss,
Be it but for a day—
As absent as a hundred years
When it has rode away.
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.
My friends are my "estate." Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them.
UPON the gallows hung a wretch,
Too sullied for the hell
To which the law entitled him.
As nature’s curtain fell
The one who bore him tottered in,
For this was woman’s son.
“’T was all I had,” she stricken gasped;
Oh, what a livid boon!
I REASON, earth is short,
And anguish absolute.
And many hurt;
But what of that?
BLESS God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast;
Grant, God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest.
We outgrow love, like other things
And put it in the Drawer —
Till it an Antique fashion shows —
Like Costumes Grandsires wore.
"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see —
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
HOW happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And does n’t care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.
A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came,
A Wisdom, without Face, or Name,
A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home
And so the Night became.
I NEVER hear the word “escape”
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude.
Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening. To come to her directly from Dante, Spenser, Blake, and Baudelaire is to find her sadomasochism obvious and flagrant. Birds, bees, and amputated hands are the dizzy stuff of this poetry. Dickinson is like the homosexual cultist draping himself in black leather and chains to bring the idea of masculinity into aggressive visibility.
I took one Draught of Life —
I'll tell you what I paid —
Precisely an existence —
The market price, they said.