61 Poems of Emily Dickinson

'Tis so much joy! 'Tis so much joy!
A light exists in spring
A precious, mouldering pleasure 'tis
A shady friend for torrid days
A word is dead
As children bid the guest good-night
As far from pity as complaint
Because I could not stop for Death
Come slowly, Eden!
Except the heaven had come so near,
For each ecstatic instant
From cocoon forth a butterfly
He ate and drank the precious words,
Heart, we will forget him!
Hope is a subtle glutton
Hope is the thing with feathers
How happy is the little stone
I bring an unaccustomed wine
I dreaded that first robin so
I had no time to hate, because
I hide myself within my flower
I like a look of agony
I never hear the word 'escape'
I noticed people disappeared
I started early, took my dog
I'm nobody! Who are you?
If I can stop one heart from breaking
Is bliss, then, such abyss
Mine enemy is growing old,
Much madness is divinest sense
My life closed twice before its close
Nature rarer uses yellow
Nature, the gentlest mother,
New feet within my garden go
No rack can torture me
Not with a club the heart is broken
On this wondrous sea
Our share of night to bear
Pain has an element of blank;
Some keep the Sabbath going to church
Some things that fly there be
Soul, wilt thou toss again?
South winds jostle them,
Success is counted sweetest
The bustle in a house
The grass so little has to do
The heart asks pleasure first
The moon was but a chin of gold
The morns are meeker than they were
The robin is the one
The sky is low, the clouds are mean
The wind tapped like a tired man
There is no frigate like a book
To fight aloud is very brave
To hear an oriole sing
To learn the transport by the pain
We learn in the retreating
When night is almost done
Who has not found the heaven below
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Within my reach!
........
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;   _
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,   _
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.
........
The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn   _
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.
The robin is the one   _
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
An April but begun.   _
The robin is the one
That speechless from her nest
Submits that home and certainty   _
And sanctity are best.
........
The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow   _
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.
A narrow wind complains all day   _
How someone treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.
........
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.   _
No bone had he to bind him,
His speech was like the push
Of numerous humming-birds at once   _
From a superior bush.
His countenance a billow,
His fingers, if he pass,   _
Let go a music, as of tunes
Blown tremulous in glass.
He visited, still flitting;   _
Then, like a timid man,
Again he tapped - 'twas flurriedly
And I became alone.
........
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,   _
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take   _
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
........
To fight aloud is very brave,
But gallanter, I know,   _
Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe.
Who win, and nations do not see,   _
Who fall, and none observe,
Whose dying eyes no country
Regards with patriot love.   _
We trust, in plumed procession,
For such the angels go,
Rank after rank, with even feet   _
And uniforms of snow.
........
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 or fair.
So whether it be rune,
Or whether it be none,   _
Is of within;
The "tune is in the tree,"
The sceptic showeth me;   _
"No, sir! In thee!"
........
To learn the transport by the pain,
As blind men learn the sun;   _
To dieof thirst, suspecting
That brooks in meadows run;
To stay the homesick, homesick feet   _
Upon a foreign shore
Haunted by native lands, the while,
And blue, beloved air   _
This is the sovereign anguish,
This, the signal woe!
These are the patient laureates   _
Whose voices, trained below,
Ascend in ceaseless carol,
Inaudible, indeed,   _
To us, the duller scholars
Of the mysterious bard!
........
We learn in the retreating
How vast a one   _
Was recently among us,
A perished sun
Endears in the departure   _
How doubly more
Than all the golden presence
It was before!
........
When night is almost done,
And sunrise grows so near   _
That we can touch the spaces,
It's time to smooth the hair
And get the dimples ready,   _
And wonder we could care
For that old faded midnight
That frightened but an hour.
........
Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.   _
God's residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.
........
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,   _
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds   _
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.   _
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor   _
To-night in thee!
........
Within my reach!
I could have touched!   _
I might have chanced that way!
Soft sauntered through the village,
Sauntered as soft away !   _
So unsuspected violets
Within the fields lie low,
Too late for striving fingers   _
That passed, an hour ago.