The Dover Anthology of American Literature Volume II (4 page)

                        
The stillness round my form

                    
Was like the stillness in the air

                        
Between the heaves of storm.

                    
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,

                        
And breaths were gathering sure

                    
For that last onset, when the king

                        
Be witnessed in his power.

                    
I willed my keepsakes, signed away

                        
What portion of me I

                    
Could 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.

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.

“
It was not death, for I stood up”
(c. 1862)

                    
It was not death, for I stood up,

                    
And all the dead lie down;

                    
It was not night, for all the bells

                    
Put out their tongues, for noon.

                    
It was not frost, for on my flesh

                    
I felt siroccos crawl,—

                    
Nor fire, for just my marble feet

                    
Could keep a chancel cool.

                    
And yet it tasted like them all;

                    
The figures I have seen

                    
Set orderly, for burial,

                    
Reminded me of mine,

                    
As if my life were shaven

                    
And fitted to a frame,

                    
And could not breathe without a key;

                    
And 't was like midnight, some,

                    
When everything that ticked has stopped,

                    
And space stares, all around,

                    
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,

                    
Repeal the beating ground.

                    
But most like chaos,—stopless, cool,—

                    
Without a chance or spar,

                    
Or even a report of land

                    
To justify despair.

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 Railway Train]
(c. 1862)

                    
I like to see it lap the miles,

                    
And lick the valleys up,

                    
And stop to feed itself at tanks;

                    
And then, prodigious, step

                    
Around a pile of mountains,

                    
And, supercilious, peer

                    
In shanties by the sides of roads;

                    
And then a quarry pare

                    
To fit its sides, and crawl between,

                    
Complaining all the while

                    
In horrid, hooting stanza;

                    
Then chase itself down hill

                    
And neigh like Boanerges;

                    
Then, punctual as a star,

                    
Stop—docile and omnipotent—

                    
At its own stable door.

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 Mystery of Pain]
(c. 1862)

                        
Pain has an element of blank;

                        
It cannot recollect

                        
When it began, or if there were

                        
A day when it was not.

                        
It has no future but itself,

                        
Its infinite realms contain

                        
Its past, enlightened to perceive

                        
New periods of pain.

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.

[
A Thunder-storm]
(c. 1864)

                    
The wind begun to rock the grass

                    
With threatening tunes and low,—

                    
He flung a menace at the earth,

                    
A menace at the sky.

                    
The leaves unhooked themselves from trees

                    
And started all abroad;

                    
The dust did scoop itself like hands

                    
And throw away the road.

                    
The wagons quickened on the streets,

                    
The thunder hurried slow;

                    
The lightning showed a yellow beak,

                    
And then a livid claw.

                    
The birds put up the bars to nests,

                    
The cattle fled to barns;

                    
There came one drop of giant rain,

                    
And then, as if the hands

                    
That held the dams had parted hold,

                    
The waters wrecked the sky,

                    
But overlooked my father's house,

                    
Just quartering a tree.

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 Lost Thought]
(c. 1864)

                        
I felt a cleaving in my mind

                            
As if my brain had split;

                        
I tried to match it, seam by seam,

                            
But could not make them fit.

                        
The
thought behind I strove to join

                            
Unto the thought before,

                        
But sequence ravelled out of reach

                            
Like balls upon a floor.

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.

[
The Snake]
(c. 1865)

                    
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.

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.

“
Nature rarer uses yellow”
(c. 1865)

                        
Nature rarer uses yellow

                            
Than another hue;

                        
Saves she all of that for sunsets,—

                            
Prodigal of blue,

                        
Spending scarlet like a woman,

                            
Yellow she affords

                        
Only scantly and selectly,

                            
Like a lover's words.

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.

[
A Book]
(c. 1873)

                        
There is no frigate like a book

                            
To take us lands away,

                        
Nor any coursers like a page

                            
Of prancing poetry.