Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
American poet.
To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights,
What must the Midnights — be!
THE DISTANCE that the dead have gone
Does not at first appear;
Their coming back seems possible
For many an ardent year.
OUR journey had advanced;
Our feet were almost come
To that odd fork in Being’s road,
Eternity by term.
SURGEONS must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit,—Life!
Her poetry is the diary or autobiography — though few diaries or autobiographies compare with it for intentional and, especially, unintentional truth — of an acute psychologist, a wonderful rhetorician, and one of the most individual writers who ever lived, one of those best able to express experience at its most nearly absolute.
Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.
THERE is a word
Which bears a sword
Can pierce an armed man.
It hurls its barbed syllables,—
At once is mute again.
But where it fell
The saved will tell
On patriotic day,
Some epauletted brother
Gave his breath away.
IT might be easier
To fail with land in sight,
Than gain my blue peninsula
To perish of delight.
I took one Draught of Life —
I'll tell you what I paid —
Precisely an existence —
The market price, they said.
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 NEVER hear the word “escape”
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude.
A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came,
A Wisdom, without Face, or Name,
A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home
And so the Night became.
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.
"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see —
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
We outgrow love, like other things
And put it in the Drawer —
Till it an Antique fashion shows —
Like Costumes Grandsires wore.
BLESS God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast;
Grant, God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest.
I REASON, earth is short,
And anguish absolute.
And many hurt;
But what of that?
THE SWEETS of Pillage can be known
To no one but the Thief,
Compassion for Integrity
Is his divinest Grief.
My friends are my "estate." Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them.
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.