The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (10 page)

Till sundown crept, a steady tide,
And men that made the hay,
And afternoon, and butterfly,
Extinguished in its sea.

VIII

BEFORE you thought of spring,
Except as a surmise,
You see, God bless his suddenness,
A fellow in the skies
Of independent hues,
A little weather-worn,
Inspiriting habiliments
⁷²
Of indigo and brown.

 

With specimens of song,
As if for you to choose,
Discretion in the interval,
With gay delays he goes
To some superior tree
Without a single leaf,
And shouts for joy to nobody
But his seraphic self!

IX

AN altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian
⁷³
light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion
⁷⁴
foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;

 

An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads,—
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus’ mystery
Receives its annual reply.

X

“WHOSE are the little beds,” I asked,
“Which in the valleys lie?”
Some shook their heads, and others smiled,
And no one made reply.

 

“Perhaps they did not hear,” I said;
“I will inquire again.
Whose are the beds, the tiny beds
So thick upon the plain?”

 

“ ’T is daisy in the shortest;
A little farther on,
Nearest the door to wake the first,
Little leontodon.
⁷⁵

 

“ ’T is iris, sir, and aster,
Anemone and bell,
Batschia in the blanket red,
And chubby daffodil.”

 

Meanwhile at many cradles
Her busy foot she plied,
Humming the quaintest lullaby
That ever rocked a child.

“Hush! Epigea wakens!
The crocus stirs her lids,
Rhodora’s cheek is crimson,—
She’s dreaming of the woods.”

 

Then, turning from them, reverent,
“Their bed-time ’t is,” she said;
“The bumble-bees will wake them
When April woods are red.”

XI

PIGMY seraphs gone astray,
Velvet people from Vevay,
⁷⁶
Belles from some lost summer day,
Bees’ exclusive coterie.
Paris could not lay the fold
Belted down with emerald;
Venice could not show a cheek
Of a tint so lustrous meek.
Never such an ambuscade
⁷⁷
As of brier and leaf displayed
For my little damask
⁷⁸
maid.
I had rather wear her grace
Than an earl’s distinguished face;
I had rather dwell like her
Than be Duke of Exeter,
⁷⁹
Royalty enough for me
To subdue the bumble-bee!

XII

To hear an oriole sing
May be a common thing,
Or only a divine.

 

It is not of the bird
Who sings the same, unheard,
As unto crowd.

 

The fashion of the ear
Attireth that it hear
In dun
⁸⁰
or fair.

So whether it be rune,
⁸¹
Or whether it be none,
Is of within;

The “tune is in the tree,”
The sceptic showeth me;
“No, sir! In thee!”

XIII

ONE of the ones that Midas touched,
Who failed to touch us all,
Was that confiding prodigal,
The blissful oriole.

So drunk, he disavows it
With badinage
⁸²
divine;
So dazzling, we mistake him
For an alighting mine.

 

A pleader, a dissembler,
An epicure, a thief,—
Betimes an oratorio,
⁸³
An ecstasy in chief;

 

The Jesuit of orchards,
He cheats as he enchants
Of an entire attar
⁸⁴
For his decamping wants.

 

The splendor of a Burmah,
⁸⁵
The meteor of birds,
Departing like a pageant
Of ballads and of bards.

 

I never thought that Jason
⁸⁶
sought
For any golden fleece;
But then I am a rural man,
With thoughts that make for peace.

 

But if there were a Jason,
Tradition suffer me
Behold his lost emolument
⁸⁷
Upon the apple-tree.

XIV

I dreaded that first robin so,
But he is mastered now,
And I’m accustomed to him grown,—
He hurts a little, though.

 

I thought if I could only live
Till that first shout got by,
Not all pianos in the woods
Had power to mangle me.

 

I dared not meet the daffodils,
For fear their yellow gown
Would pierce me with a fashion
So foreign to my own.

 

I wished the grass would hurry,
So when ’t was time to see,
He’d be too tall, the tallest one
Could stretch to look at me.

 

I could not bear the bees should come,
I wished they’d stay away
In those dim countries where they go:
What word had they for me?

 

They’re here, though; not a creature failed,
No blossom stayed away
In gentle deference to me,
The Queen of Calvary.

 

Each one salutes me as he goes,
And I my childish plumes
Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment
Of their unthinking drums.

XV

A route of evanescence
With a revolving wheel;
A resonance of emerald,
A rush of cochineal;
And every blossom on the bush
Adjusts its tumbled head,—
The mail from Tunis,
⁸⁸
probably,
An easy morning’s ride.

XVI

THE skies can’t keep their secret!
They tell it to the hills-
The hills just tell the orchards-
And they the daffodils!

 

A bird, by chance, that goes that way
Soft overheard the whole.
If I should bribe the little bird,
Who knows but she would tell?

 

I think I won‘t, however,
It’s finer not to know;
If summer were an axiom,
What sorcery had snow?

 

So keep your secret, Father!
I would not, if I could,
Know what the sapphire fellows do,
In your new-fashioned world!

XVII

WHO robbed the woods,
The trusting woods?
The unsuspecting trees
Brought out their burrs and mosses
His fantasy to please.
He scanned their trinkets, curious,
He grasped, he bore away.
What will the solemn hemlock,
What will the fir-tree say?

XVIII

Two butterflies went out at noon
And waltzed above a stream.
Then stepped straight through the firmament
And rested on a beam;

 

And then together bore away
Upon a shining sea,—
Though never yet, in any port,
Their coming mentioned be.

 

If spoken by the distant bird,
If met in ether sea
By frigate or by merchantman,
Report was not to me.

XIX

I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me,

 

And frigates in the upper floor
Extended hempen
⁸⁹
hands,
Presuming me to be a mouse
Aground, upon the sands.

 

But no man moved me till the tide
Went past my simple shoe,
And past my apron and my belt,
And past my bodice too,

 

And made as he would eat me up
As wholly as a dew
Upon a dandelion’s sleeve—
And then I started too.

 

And he—he followed close behind;
I felt his silver heel
Upon my ankle,—then my shoes
Would overflow with pearl.

 

Until we met the solid town,
No man he seemed to know;
And bowing with a mighty look
At me, the sea withdrew.

XX

ARCTURUS
⁹⁰
is his other name,—
I’d rather call him star!
It’s so unkind of science
To go and interfere!

 

I pull a flower from the woods,—
A monster with a glass
Computes the stamens in a breath,
And has her in a class.

 

Whereas I took the butterfly
Aforetime in my hat,
He sits erect in cabinets,
The clover-bells forgot.

 

What once was heaven, is zenith now.
Where I proposed to go
When time’s brief masquerade was done,
Is mapped, and charted too!

 

What if the poles should frisk about
And stand upon their heads!
I hope I’m ready for the worst,
Whatever prank betides!
⁹¹

 

Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven’s changed!
I hope the children there
Won’t be new-fashioned when I come,
And laugh at me, and stare!

I hope the father in the skies
Will lift his little girl,-
Old-fashioned, naughty, everything,—
Over the stile
⁹²
of pearl!

XXI

AN awful tempest mashed the air,
The clouds were gaunt and few;
A black, as of a spectre’s cloak,
Hid heaven and earth from view.

 

The creatures chuckled on the roofs
And whistled in the air,
And shook their fists and gnashed their teeth,
And swung their frenzied hair.

 

The morning lit, the birds arose;
The monster’s faded eyes
Turned slowly to his native coast,
And peace was Paradise!

XXII

AN everywhere of silver,
With ropes of sand
To keep it from effacing
The track called land.

XIII

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm
⁹³
in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

 

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,—
They looked like frightened beads, I thought
He stirred his velvet head

 

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

 

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless,
⁹⁴
as they swim.

XXIV

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,—did you not?
His notice sudden is.

 

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

 

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

 

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,-
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

 

Several of nature’s people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

 

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

XXV

THE mushroom is the elf of plants,
At evening it is not;
At morning in a truffled
⁹⁵
hut
It stops upon a spot

 

As if it tarried always;
And yet its whole career
Is shorter than a snake’s delay,
And fleeter than a tare.
⁹⁶

 

’T is vegetation’s juggler,
The germ of alibi;
Doth like a bubble antedate,
And like a bubble hie.

 

I feel as if the grass were pleased
To have it intermit;
The surreptitious scion
Of summer’s circumspect.

 

Had nature any outcast face,
Could she a son contemn,
Had nature an Iscarioty
⁹⁷
That mushroom,—it is him.

XXVI

THERE came a wind like a bugle;
It quivered through the grass,
And a green chill upon the heat
So ominous did pass
We barred the windows and the doors
As from an emerald ghost;

The doom’s electric moccason
That very instant passed.
On a strange mob of panting trees,
And fences fled away,
And rivers where the houses ran
The living looked that day.
The bell within the steeple wild
The flying tidings whirled.
How much can come
And much can go,
And yet abide the world!

XXVII

A spider sewed at night
Without a light
Upon an arc of white.
If ruff it was of dame
Or shroud of gnome,
Himself, himself inform.
Of immortality
His strategy
Was physiognomy.
⁹⁸

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,
⁹⁹
And spices, and the dew,
That stiffens quietly to quartz,
Upon her amber shoe.

XXIX

THE one that could repeat the summer day
Were greater than itself, though he
Minutest of mankind might be.
And who could reproduce the sun,
At period of going down—
The lingering and the stain, I mean—
When Orient has been outgrown,
And Occident becomes unknown,
His name remain.

XXX

THE wind tapped like a tired man,
And like a host, “Come in,”
I boldly answered; entered then
My residence within

A rapid, footless guest,
To offer whom a chair
Were as impossible as hand
A sofa to the air.