The Dover Anthology of American Literature Volume II (3 page)

S
OURCE:
Poems by Emily Dickinson: Edited by Two of Her Friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.
Second Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892.

“
Heaven is what I cannot reach!”
(c. 1861)

                    
Heaven is what I cannot reach!

                    
The apple on the tree,

                    
Provided it do hopeless hang,

                    
That “heaven” is, to me.

                    
The color on the cruising cloud,

                    
The interdicted ground

                    
Behind the hill, the house behind,—

                    
There Paradise is found!

S
OURCE:
Poems by Emily Dickinson: Edited by Two of Her Friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.
Third Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1896.

[
Hope]
(c. 1861)

                    
Hope is the thing with feathers

                    
That perches in the soul,

                    
And sings the tune without the words,

                    
And never stops at all,

                    
And sweetest in the gale is heard;

                    
And sore must be the storm

                    
That could abash the little bird

                    
That kept so many warm.

                    
I've heard it in the chillest land,

                    
And on the strangest sea;

                    
Yet, never, in extremity,

                    
It asked a crumb of me.

S
OURCE:
Poems by Emily Dickinson: Edited by Two of Her Friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.
Second Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892.

“
There's a certain slant of light”
(c. 1861)

                    
There's a certain slant of light,

                    
On winter afternoons,

                    
That oppresses, like the weight

                    
Of cathedral tunes.

                    
Heavenly hurt it gives us;

                    
We can find no scar,

                    
But internal difference

                    
Where the meanings are.

                    
None may teach it anything,

                    
'T is the seal, despair,—

                    
An imperial affliction

                    
Sent us of the air.

                    
When it comes, the landscape listens,

                    
Shadows hold their breath;

                    
When it goes, 't is like the distance

                    
On the look of death.

S
OURCE:
Poems by Emily Dickinson: Edited by Two of Her Friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.
Second Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892.

“
I'm nobody! Who are you?”
(c. 1861)

                    
I'm nobody! Who are you?

                    
Are you nobody, too?

                    
Then there's a pair of us—don't tell!

                    
They'd banish us, you know.

                    
How dreary to be somebody!

                    
How public, like a frog

                    
To tell your name the livelong day

                    
To an admiring bog!

S
OURCE:
Poems by Emily Dickinson: Edited by Two of Her Friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.
Second Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892.

“
The nearest dream recedes, unrealized”
(c. 1861)

                
The nearest dream recedes, unrealized.

                    
The heaven we chase

                    
Like the June bee

                    
Before the school-boy

                    
Invites the race;

                    
Stoops to an easy clover—

                
Dips—evades—teases—deploys;

                    
Then to the royal clouds

                    
Lifts his light pinnace

                    
Heedless of the boy

                
Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.

                    
Homesick for steadfast honey,

                    
Ah! the bee flies not

                
That brews that rare variety.

S
OURCE:
Poems by Emily Dickinson: Edited by Two of Her Friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.
Second Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892.

[
The Master]
(c. 1862)

                    
He fumbles at your spirit

                        
As players at the keys

                    
Before they drop full music on;

                        
He stuns you by degrees,

                    
Prepares your brittle substance

                        
For the ethereal blow,

                    
By fainter hammers, further heard,

                        
Then nearer, then so slow

                    
Your breath has time to straighten,

                        
Your brain to bubble cool,—

                    
Deals one imperial thunderbolt

                        
That scalps your naked soul.

S
OURCE:
Poems by Emily Dickinson: Edited by Two of Her Friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.
Third Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1896.

[
In the Garden]
(c. 1862)

            
A bird came down the walk:

            
He did not know I saw;

            
He bit an angle-worm 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, as they swim.

S
OURCE:
Poems by Emily Dickinson: Edited by Two of Her Friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.
Second Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892.

[
Retrospect]
(c. 1862)

                    
'T was just this time last year I died.

                        
I know I heard the corn,

                    
When I was carried by the farms,—

                        
It had the tassels on.

                    
I
thought how yellow it would look

                        
When Richard went to mill;

                    
And then I wanted to get out,

                        
But something held my will.

                    
I thought just how red apples wedged

                        
The stubble's joints between;

                    
And carts went stooping round the fields

                        
To take the pumpkins in.

                    
I wondered which would miss me least,

                        
And when Thanksgiving came,

                    
If father 'd multiply the plates

                        
To make an even sum.

                    
And if my stocking hung too high,

                        
Would it blur the Christmas glee,

                    
That not a Santa Claus could reach

                        
The altitude of me?

                    
But this sort grieved myself, and so

                        
I thought how it would be

                    
When just this time, some perfect year,

                        
Themselves should come to me.

S
OURCE:
Poems by Emily Dickinson: Edited by Two of Her Friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.
Third Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1896.

“
I died for beauty, but was scarce”
(c. 1862)

                    
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.

S
OURCE:
Poems by Emily Dickinson: Edited by Two of Her Friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.
Second Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892.

[
Dying]
(c. 1862)

                    
I heard a fly buzz when I died;