Poems by Emily Dickinson, Third Series

XXII.

WEDDED

A solemn thing it was, I said,  A woman white to be,And wear, if God should count me fit,  Her hallowed mystery.A timid thing to drop a life  Into the purple well,Too plummetless that it come back  Eternity until.

III. NATURE

I.

NATURE'S CHANGES

The springtime's pallid landscape  Will glow like bright bouquet,Though drifted deep in parian  The village lies to-day.The lilacs, bending many a year,  With purple load will hang;The bees will not forget the tune  Their old forefathers sang.The rose will redden in the bog,  The aster on the hillHer everlasting fashion set,  And covenant gentians frill,Till summer folds her miracle  As women do their gown,Or priests adjust the symbols  When sacrament is done.

II.

THE TULIP

She slept beneath a tree  Remembered but by me.I touched her cradle mute;She recognized the foot,Put on her carmine suit, —  And see!

III

A light exists in spring  Not present on the yearAt any other period.  When March is scarcely hereA color stands abroad  On solitary hillsThat science cannot overtake,  But human nature feels.It waits upon the lawn;  It shows the furthest treeUpon the furthest slope we know;  It almost speaks to me.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.

IV.

THE WAKING YEAR

A lady red upon the hill  Her annual secret keeps;A lady white within the field  In placid lily sleeps!The tidy breezes with their brooms  Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!Prithee, my pretty housewives!  Who may expected be?The neighbors do not yet suspect!  The woods exchange a smile —Orchard, and buttercup, and bird —  In such a little while!And yet how still the landscape stands,  How nonchalant the wood,As if the resurrection  Were nothing very odd!

V.

TO MARCH

Dear March, come in!How glad I am!I looked for you before.Put down your hat —You must have walked —How out of breath you are!Dear March, how are you?And the rest?Did you leave Nature well?Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,I have so much to tell!I got your letter, and the birds';The maples never knewThat you were coming, – I declare,How red their faces grew!But, March, forgive me —And all those hillsYou left for me to hue;There was no purple suitable,You took it all with you.Who knocks? That April!Lock the door!I will not be pursued!He stayed away a year, to callWhen I am occupied.But trifles look so trivialAs soon as you have come,That blame is just as dear as praiseAnd praise as mere as blame.

VI.

MARCH

We like March, his shoes are purple,  He is new and high;Makes he mud for dog and peddler,  Makes he forest dry;Knows the adder's tongue his coming,  And begets her spot.Stands the sun so close and mighty  That our minds are hot.News is he of all the others;  Bold it were to dieWith the blue-birds buccaneering  On his British sky.

VII.

DAWN

Not knowing when the dawn will come  I open every door;Or has it feathers like a bird,  Or billows like a shore?

VIII

A murmur in the trees to note,  Not loud enough for wind;A star not far enough to seek,  Nor near enough to find;A long, long yellow on the lawn,  A hubbub as of feet;Not audible, as ours to us,  But dapperer, more sweet;A hurrying home of little men  To houses unperceived, —All this, and more, if I should tell,  Would never be believed.Of robins in the trundle bed  How many I espyWhose nightgowns could not hide the wings,  Although I heard them try!But then I promised ne'er to tell;  How could I break my word?So go your way and I'll go mine, —  No fear you'll miss the road.

IX

Morning is the place for dew,  Corn is made at noon,After dinner light for flowers,  Dukes for setting sun!

X

To my quick ear the leaves conferred;  The bushes they were bells;I could not find a privacy  From Nature's sentinels.In cave if I presumed to hide,  The walls began to tell;Creation seemed a mighty crack  To make me visible.

XI.

A ROSE

A sepal, petal, and a thorn  Upon a common summer's morn,A flash of dew, a bee or two,A breezeA caper in the trees, —  And I'm a rose!

XII

High from the earth I heard a bird;  He trod upon the treesAs he esteemed them trifles,  And then he spied a breeze,And situated softly  Upon a pile of windWhich in a perturbation  Nature had left behind.A joyous-going fellow  I gathered from his talk,Which both of benediction  And badinage partook,Without apparent burden,  I learned, in leafy woodHe was the faithful father  Of a dependent brood;And this untoward transport  His remedy for care, —A contrast to our respites.  How different we are!

XIII.

COBWEBS

The spider as an artist  Has never been employedThough his surpassing merit  Is freely certifiedBy every broom and Bridget  Throughout a Christian land.Neglected son of genius,  I take thee by the hand.

XIV.

A WELL

What mystery pervades a well!  The water lives so far,Like neighbor from another world  Residing in a jar.The grass does not appear afraid;  I often wonder heCan stand so close and look so bold  At what is dread to me.Related somehow they may be, —  The sedge stands next the sea,Where he is floorless, yet of fear  No evidence gives he.But nature is a stranger yet;  The ones that cite her mostHave never passed her haunted house,  Nor simplified her ghost.To pity those that know her not  Is helped by the regretThat those who know her, know her less  The nearer her they get.

XV

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, —One clover, and a bee,And revery.The revery alone will doIf bees are few.

XVI.

THE WIND

It's like the light, —  A fashionless delightIt's like the bee, —  A dateless melody.It's like the woods,  Private like breeze,Phraseless, yet it stirs  The proudest trees.It's like the morning, —  Best when it's done, —The everlasting clocks  Chime noon.

XVII

A dew sufficed itself  And satisfied a leaf,And felt, 'how vast a destiny!  How trivial is life!'The sun went out to work,  The day went out to play,But not again that dew was seen  By physiognomy.Whether by day abducted,  Or emptied by the sunInto the sea, in passing,  Eternally unknown.

XVIII.

THE WOODPECKER

His bill an auger is,  His head, a cap and frill.He laboreth at every tree, —  A worm his utmost goal.

XIX.

A SNAKE

Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,  Until we meet a snake;'T is then we sigh for houses,  And our departure takeAt that enthralling gallop  That only childhood knows.A snake is summer's treason,  And guile is where it goes.

XX

Could I but ride indefinite,  As doth the meadow-bee,And visit only where I liked,  And no man visit me,And flirt all day with buttercups,  And marry whom I may,And dwell a little everywhere,  Or better, run awayWith no police to follow,  Or chase me if I do,Till I should jump peninsulas  To get away from you, —I said, but just to be a bee  Upon a raft of air,And row in nowhere all day long,  And anchor off the bar,—What liberty! So captives deem  Who tight in dungeons are.

XXI.

THE MOON

The moon was but a chin of gold  A night or two ago,And now she turns her perfect face  Upon the world below.Her forehead is of amplest blond;  Her cheek like beryl stone;Her eye unto the summer dew  The likest I have known.Her lips of amber never part;  But what must be the smileUpon her friend she could bestow  Were such her silver will!And what a privilege to be  But the remotest star!For certainly her way might pass  Beside your twinkling door.Her bonnet is the firmament,  The universe her shoe,The stars the trinkets at her belt,  Her dimities of blue.

XXII.

THE BAT

The bat is dun with wrinkled wings  Like fallow article,And not a song pervades his lips,  Or none perceptible.His small umbrella, quaintly halved,  Describing in the airAn arc alike inscrutable, —  Elate philosopher!Deputed from what firmament  Of what astute abode,Empowered with what malevolence  Auspiciously withheld.To his adroit Creator  Ascribe no less the praise;Beneficent, believe me,  His eccentricities.

XXIII.

THE BALLOON

You've seen balloons set, haven't you?  So stately they ascendIt is as swans discarded you  For duties diamond.Their liquid feet go softly out  Upon a sea of blond;They spurn the air as 't were too mean  For creatures so renowned.Their ribbons just beyond the eye,  They struggle some for breath,And yet the crowd applauds below;  They would not encore death.The gilded creature strains and spins,  Trips frantic in a tree,Tears open her imperial veins  And tumbles in the sea.The crowd retire with an oath  The dust in streets goes down,And clerks in counting-rooms observe,  ''T was only a balloon.'

XXIV.

EVENING

The cricket sang,And set the sun,And workmen finished, one by one,  Their seam the day upon.The low grass loaded with the dew,The twilight stood as strangers doWith hat in hand, polite and new,  To stay as if, or go.A vastness, as a neighbor, came, —A wisdom without face or name,A peace, as hemispheres at home, —  And so the night became.

XXV.

COCOON

Drab habitation of whom?Tabernacle or tomb,Or dome of worm,Or porch of gnome,Or some elf's catacomb?

XXVI.

SUNSET

A sloop of amber slips away  Upon an ether sea,And wrecks in peace a purple tar,  The son of ecstasy.

XXVII.

AURORA

Of bronze and blaze  The north, to-night!  So adequate its forms,So preconcerted with itself,  So distant to alarms, —An unconcern so sovereign  To universe, or me,It paints my simple spirit  With tints of majesty,Till I take vaster attitudes,  And strut upon my stem,Disdaining men and oxygen,  For arrogance of them.My splendors are menagerie;  But their competeless showWill entertain the centuries  When I am, long ago,An island in dishonored grass,  Whom none but daisies know.

XXVIII.

THE COMING OF NIGHT

How the old mountains drip with sunset,  And the brake of dun!How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel  By the wizard sun!How the old steeples hand the scarlet,  Till the ball is full, —Have I the lip of the flamingo  That I dare to tell?Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,  Touching all the grassWith a departing, sapphire feature,  As if a duchess pass!How a small dusk crawls on the village  Till the houses blot;And the odd flambeaux no men carry  Glimmer on the spot!Now it is night in nest and kennel,  And where was the wood,Just a dome of abyss is nodding  Into solitude! —These are the visions baffled Guido;  Titian never told;Domenichino dropped the pencil,  Powerless to unfold.

XXIX.

AFTERMATH

The murmuring of bees has ceased;  But murmuring of somePosterior, prophetic,  Has simultaneous come, —The lower metres of the year,  When nature's laugh is done, —The Revelations of the book  Whose Genesis is June.

IV. TIME AND ETERNITY

I

This world is not conclusion;  A sequel stands beyond,Invisible, as music,  But positive, as sound.It beckons and it baffles;  Philosophies don't know,And through a riddle, at the last,  Sagacity must go.To guess it puzzles scholars;  To gain it, men have shownContempt of generations,  And crucifixion known.

II

We learn in the retreating  How vast an oneWas recently among us.  A perished sunEndears in the departure  How doubly moreThan all the golden presence  It was before!

III

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.

IV

We cover thee, sweet face.  Not that we tire of thee,But that thyself fatigue of us;  Remember, as thou flee,We follow thee until  Thou notice us no more,And then, reluctant, turn away  To con thee o'er and o'er,And blame the scanty love  We were content to show,Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold  If thou would'st take it now.

V.

ENDING

That is solemn we have ended, —  Be it but a play,Or a glee among the garrets,  Or a holiday,Or a leaving home; or later,  Parting with a worldWe have understood, for better  Still it be unfurled.

VI

The stimulus, beyond the grave  His countenance to see,Supports me like imperial drams  Afforded royally.

VII

Given in marriage unto thee,  Oh, thou celestial host!Bride of the Father and the Son,  Bride of the Holy Ghost!Other betrothal shall dissolve,  Wedlock of will decay;Only the keeper of this seal  Conquers mortality.

VIII

That such have died enables us  The tranquiller to die;That such have lived, certificate  For immortality.

IX

They won't frown always, – some sweet day  When I forget to tease,They'll recollect how cold I looked,  And how I just said 'please.'Then they will hasten to the door  To call the little child,Who cannot thank them, for the ice  That on her lisping piled.

X.

IMMORTALITY

It is an honorable thought,  And makes one lift one's hat,As one encountered gentlefolk  Upon a daily street,That we've immortal place,  Though pyramids decay,And kingdoms, like the orchard,  Flit russetly away.

XI

The distance that the dead have gone  Does not at first appear;Their coming back seems possible  For many an ardent year.And then, that we have followed them  We more than half suspect,So intimate have we become  With their dear retrospect.

XII

How dare the robins sing,  When men and women hearWho since they went to their account  Have settled with the year! —Paid all that life had earned  In one consummate bill,And now, what life or death can do  Is immaterial.Insulting is the sun  To him whose mortal light,Beguiled of immortality,  Bequeaths him to the night.In deference to him  Extinct be every hum,Whose garden wrestles with the dew,  At daybreak overcome!

XIII.

DEATH

Death is like the insect  Menacing the tree,Competent to kill it,  But decoyed may be.Bait it with the balsam,  Seek it with the knife,Baffle, if it cost you  Everything in life.Then, if it have burrowed  Out of reach of skill,Ring the tree and leave it, —  'T is the vermin's will.

XIV.

UNWARNED

'T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou  No station in the day?'T was not thy wont to hinder so, —  Retrieve thine industry.'T is noon, my little maid, alas!  And art thou sleeping yet?The lily waiting to be wed,  The bee, dost thou forget?My little maid, 't is night; alas,  That night should be to theeInstead of morning! Hadst thou broached  Thy little plan to me,Dissuade thee if I could not, sweet,  I might have aided thee.

XV

Each that we lose takes part of us;  A crescent still abides,Which like the moon, some turbid night,  Is summoned by the tides.

XVI

Not any higher stands the grave  For heroes than for men;Not any nearer for the child  Than numb three-score and ten.This latest leisure equal lulls  The beggar and his queen;Propitiate this democrat  By summer's gracious mien.

XVII.

ASLEEP

As far from pity as complaint,  As cool to speech as stone,As numb to revelation  As if my trade were bone.As far from time as history,  As near yourself to-dayAs children to the rainbow's scarf,  Or sunset's yellow playTo eyelids in the sepulchre.  How still the dancer lies,While color's revelations break,  And blaze the butterflies!

XVIII.

THE SPIRIT

'T is whiter than an Indian pipe,  'T is dimmer than a lace;No stature has it, like a fog,  When you approach the place.Not any voice denotes it here,  Or intimates it there;A spirit, how doth it accost?  What customs hath the air?This limitless hyperbole  Each one of us shall be;'T is drama, if (hypothesis)  It be not tragedy!

XIX.

THE MONUMENT

She laid her docile crescent down,  And this mechanic stoneStill states, to dates that have forgot,  The news that she is gone.So constant to its stolid trust,  The shaft that never knew,It shames the constancy that fled  Before its emblem flew.

XX

Bless God, he went as soldiers,  His musket on his breast;Grant, God, he charge the bravest  Of all the martial blest.Please God, might I behold him  In epauletted white,I should not fear the foe then,  I should not fear the fight.

XXI

Immortal is an ample word  When what we need is by,But when it leaves us for a time,  'T is a necessity.Of heaven above the firmest proof  We fundamental know,Except for its marauding hand,  It had been heaven below.

XXII

Where every bird is bold to go,  And bees abashless play,The foreigner before he knocks  Must thrust the tears away.

XXIII

The grave my little cottage is,  Where, keeping house for thee,I make my parlor orderly,  And lay the marble tea,For two divided, briefly,  A cycle, it may be,Till everlasting life unite  In strong society.

XXIV

This was in the white of the year,  That was in the green,Drifts were as difficult then to think  As daisies now to be seen.Looking back is best that is left,  Or if it be before,Retrospection is prospect's half,  Sometimes almost more.

XXV

Sweet hours have perished here;  This is a mighty room;Within its precincts hopes have played, —  Now shadows in the tomb.

XXVI

Me! Come! My dazzled faceIn such a shining place!Me! Hear! My foreign earThe sounds of welcome near!The saints shall meetOur bashful feet.My holiday shall beThat they remember me;My paradise, the fameThat they pronounce my name.

XXVII.

INVISIBLE

From us she wandered now a year,  Her tarrying unknown;If wilderness prevent her feet,  Or that ethereal zoneNo eye hath seen and lived,  We ignorant must be.We only know what time of year  We took the mystery.

XXVIII

I wish I knew that woman's name,  So, when she comes this way,To hold my life, and hold my ears,  For fear I hear her sayShe's 'sorry I am dead,' again,  Just when the grave and IHave sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, —  Our only lullaby.

XXIX.

TRYING TO FORGET

Bereaved of all, I went abroad,  No less bereaved to beUpon a new peninsula, —  The grave preceded me,Obtained my lodgings ere myself,  And when I sought my bed,The grave it was, reposed upon  The pillow for my head.I waked, to find it first awake,  I rose, – it followed me;I tried to drop it in the crowd,  To lose it in the sea,In cups of artificial drowse  To sleep its shape away, —The grave was finished, but the spade  Remained in memory.

XXX

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 drumKept beating, beating, till I thought  My mind was going numb.And then I heard them lift a box,  And creak across my soulWith those same boots of lead, again.  Then space began to tollAs all the heavens were a bell,  And Being but an ear,And I and silence some strange race,  Wrecked, solitary, here.

XXXI

I meant to find her when I came;  Death had the same design;But the success was his, it seems,  And the discomfit mine.I meant to tell her how I longed  For just this single time;But Death had told her so the first,  And she had hearkened him.To wander now is my abode;  To rest, – to rest would beA privilege of hurricane  To memory and me.

XXXII.

WAITING

I sing to use the waiting,  My bonnet but to tie,And shut the door unto my house;  No more to do have I,Till, his best step approaching,  We journey to the day,And tell each other how we sang  To keep the dark away.

XXXIII

A sickness of this world it most occasions  When best men die;A wishfulness their far condition  To occupy.A chief indifference, as foreign  A world must beThemselves forsake contented,  For Deity.

XXXIV

Superfluous were the sun  When excellence is dead;He were superfluous every day,  For every day is saidThat syllable whose faith  Just saves it from despair,And whose 'I'll meet you' hesitates  If love inquire, 'Where?'Upon his dateless fame  Our periods may lie,As stars that drop anonymous  From an abundant sky.

XXXV

So proud she was to die  It made us all ashamedThat what we cherished, so unknown  To her desire seemed.So satisfied to go  Where none of us should be,Immediately, that anguish stooped  Almost to jealousy.

XXXVI.

FAREWELL

Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,  Then I am ready to go!Just a look at the horses —  Rapid! That will do!Put me in on the firmest side,  So I shall never fall;For we must ride to the Judgment,  And it's partly down hill.But never I mind the bridges,  And never I mind the sea;Held fast in everlasting race  By my own choice and thee.Good-by to the life I used to live,  And the world I used to know;And kiss the hills for me, just once;  Now I am ready to go!

XXXVII

The dying need but little, dear, —  A glass of water's all,A flower's unobtrusive face  To punctuate the wall,A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,  And certainly that oneNo color in the rainbow  Perceives when you are gone.

XXXVIII.

DEAD

There's something quieter than sleep  Within this inner room!It wears a sprig upon its breast,  And will not tell its name.Some touch it and some kiss it,  Some chafe its idle hand;It has a simple gravity  I do not understand!While simple-hearted neighbors  Chat of the 'early dead,'We, prone to periphrasis,  Remark that birds have fled!

XXXIX

The soul should always stand ajar,  That if the heaven inquire,He will not be obliged to wait,  Or shy of troubling her.Depart, before the host has slid  The bolt upon the door,To seek for the accomplished guest, —  Her visitor no more.

XL

Three weeks passed since I had seen her, —  Some disease had vexed;'T was with text and village singing  I beheld her next,And a company – our pleasure  To discourse alone;Gracious now to me as any,  Gracious unto none.Borne, without dissent of either,  To the parish night;Of the separated people  Which are out of sight?

XLI

I breathed enough to learn the trick,  And now, removed from air,I simulate the breath so well,  That one, to be quite sureThe lungs are stirless, must descend  Among the cunning cells,And touch the pantomime himself.  How cool the bellows feels!

XLII

I wonder if the sepulchre  Is not a lonesome way,When men and boys, and larks and June  Go down the fields to hay!

XLIII.

JOY IN DEATH

If tolling bell I ask the cause.  'A soul has gone to God,'I'm answered in a lonesome tone;  Is heaven then so sad?That bells should joyful ring to tell  A soul had gone to heaven,Would seem to me the proper way  A good news should be given.

XLIV

If I may have it when it's dead  I will contented be;If just as soon as breath is out  It shall belong to me,Until they lock it in the grave,  'T is bliss I cannot weigh,For though they lock thee in the grave,  Myself can hold the key.Think of it, lover! I and thee  Permitted face to face to be;After a life, a death we'll say, —  For death was that, and this is thee.

XLV

Before the ice is in the pools,  Before the skaters go,Or any cheek at nightfall  Is tarnished by the snow,Before the fields have finished,  Before the Christmas tree,Wonder upon wonder  Will arrive to me!What we touch the hems of  On a summer's day;What is only walking  Just a bridge away;That which sings so, speaks so,  When there's no one here, —Will the frock I wept in  Answer me to wear?

XLVI.

DYING

I heard a fly buzz when I died;  The stillness round my formWas like the stillness in the air  Between the heaves of storm.The eyes beside had wrung them dry,  And breaths were gathering sureFor that last onset, when the king  Be witnessed in his power.I willed my keepsakes, signed away  What portion of me ICould make assignable, – and then  There interposed a fly,With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,  Between the light and me;And then the windows failed, and then  I could not see to see.