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    The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
    The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
    The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
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    The Poetry of Emily Dickinson

    By Emily Dickinson

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    “This is my letter to the world . . .” — Emily Dickinson

    The Poetry of Emily Dickinson is a collection of pieces by 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson, who insisted that her life of isolation gave her an introspective and deep connection with the world. As a result, her work parallels her life—misunderstood in its time, but full of depth and imagination, and covering such universal themes as nature, art, friendship, love, society, mortality, and more. During Dickinson’s lifetime, only seven of her poems were published, but after her death, her prolific writings were discovered and shared. With this volume, readers can dive into the now widely respected poetry of Emily Dickinson.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCanterbury Classics
    Release dateJul 1, 2015
    ISBN9781626864047
    Author

    Emily Dickinson

    Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life, but today is considered to be one of the most influential poets in American history.

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    Reviews for The Poetry of Emily Dickinson

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    • 5/5
      This is an absolutely lovely set of poetry. I would definitely recommend picking up this book if you are interested in reading works by Emily Dickinson. It was an absolute pleasure to sit down and finally read some work by this literary great!

      Poetry bundles are honestly one of the greatest achievements in literature. They are the type of anthologies we truly need! I'm glad someone decided to put this book together.

      It was a personal goal to just read something by Emily Dickinson. Sometimes I just want to sit down and read a classic without any strings attached. I'd highly recommend her work if you're interested in poetry.

      Five out of five stars. What a lovely collection!

    Book preview

    The Poetry of Emily Dickinson - Emily Dickinson

    POEMS

    BY EMILY DICKINSON

    Edited by two of her friends,

    Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson

    (1890)

    Preface

    The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called the Poetry of the Portfolio,—something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer’s own mind. Such verse must inevitably forfeit whatever advantage lies in the discipline of public criticism and the enforced conformity to accepted ways. On the other hand, it may often gain something through the habit of freedom and the unconventional utterance of daring thoughts. In the case of the present author, there was absolutely no choice in the matter; she must write thus, or not at all. A recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father’s grounds, she habitually concealed her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends; and it was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or four poems. Yet she wrote verses in great abundance; and though curiously indifferent to all conventional rules, had yet a rigorous literary standard of her own, and often altered a word many times to suit an ear which had its own tenacious fastidiousness.

    Miss Dickinson was born in Amherst, Mass., Dec. 10, 1830, and died there May 15, 1886. Her father, Hon. Edward Dickinson, was the leading lawyer of Amherst, and was treasurer of the well-known college there situated. It was his custom once a year to hold a large reception at his house, attended by all the families connected with the institution and by the leading people of the town. On these occasions his daughter Emily emerged from her wonted retirement and did her part as gracious hostess; nor would any one have known from her manner, I have been told, that this was not a daily occurrence. The annual occasion once past, she withdrew again into her seclusion, and except for a very few friends was as invisible to the world as if she had dwelt in a nunnery. For myself, although I had corresponded with her for many years, I saw her but twice face to face, and brought away the impression of something as unique and remote as Undine or Mignon or Thekla.

    This selection from her poems is published to meet the desire of her personal friends, and especially of her surviving sister. It is believed that the thoughtful reader will find in these pages a quality more suggestive of the poetry of William Blake than of anything to be elsewhere found,—flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame. They are here published as they were written, with very few and superficial changes; although it is fair to say that the titles have been assigned, almost invariably, by the editors. In many cases these verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed. In other cases, as in the few poems of shipwreck or of mental conflict, we can only wonder at the gift of vivid imagination by which this recluse woman can delineate, by a few touches, the very crises of physical or mental struggle. And sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain, sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the reader regret its sudden cessation. But the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight, uttered with an uneven vigor sometimes exasperating, seemingly wayward, but really unsought and inevitable. After all, when a thought takes one’s breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote in his earlier and better days, No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.

    —THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

    This is my letter to the world,

    That never wrote to me,—

    The simple news that Nature told,

    With tender majesty.

    Her message is committed

    To hands I cannot see;

    For love of her, sweet countrymen,

    Judge tenderly of me!

    I. Life

    I

    SUCCESS

    *

    Success is counted sweetest

    By those who ne’er succeed.

    To comprehend a nectar

    Requires sorest need.

    Not one of all the purple host

    Who took the flag to-day

    Can tell the definition,

    So clear, of victory,

    As he, defeated, dying,

    On whose forbidden ear

    The distant strains of triumph

    Break, agonized and clear!

    II

    Our share of night to bear,

    Our share of morning,

    Our blank in bliss to fill,

    Our blank in scorning.

    Here a star, and there a star,

    Some lose their way.

    Here a mist, and there a mist,

    Afterwards—day!

    ____________________________________

    * Published in A Masque of Poets at the request of H.H., the author’s fellow-townswoman and friend.

    III

    ROUGE ET NOIR

    Soul, wilt thou toss again?

    By just such a hazard

    Hundreds have lost, indeed,

    But tens have won an all.

    Angels’ breathless ballot

    Lingers to record thee;

    Imps in eager caucus

    Raffle for my soul.

    IV

    ROUGE GAGNE

    ’Tis so much joy! ’Tis so much joy!

    If I should fail, what poverty!

    And yet, as poor as I

    Have ventured all upon a throw;

    Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so

    This side the victory!

    Life is but life, and death but death!

    Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!

    And if, indeed, I fail,

    At least to know the worst is sweet.

    Defeat means nothing but defeat,

    No drearier can prevail!

    And if I gain,—oh, gun at sea,

    Oh, bells that in the steeples be,

    At first repeat it slow!

    For heaven is a different thing

    Conjectured, and waked sudden in,

    And might o’erwhelm me so!

    V

    Glee! The great storm is over!

    Four have recovered the land;

    Forty gone down together

    Into the boiling sand.

    Ring, for the scant salvation!

    Toll, for the bonnie souls,—

    Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,

    Spinning upon the shoals!

    How they will tell the shipwreck

    When winter shakes the door,

    Till the children ask, "But the forty?

    Did they come back no more?"

    Then a silence suffuses the story,

    And a softness the teller’s eye;

    And the children no further question,

    And only the waves reply.

    VI

    If I can stop one heart from breaking,

    I shall not live in vain;

    If I can ease one life the aching,

    Or cool one pain,

    Or help one fainting robin

    Unto his nest again,

    I shall not live in vain.

    VII

    ALMOST!

    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.

    VIII

    A wounded deer leaps highest,

    I’ve heard the hunter tell;

    ’Tis but the ecstasy of death,

    And then the brake is still.

    The smitten rock that gushes,

    The trampled steel that springs;

    A cheek is always redder

    Just where the hectic stings!

    Mirth is the mail of anguish,

    In which it cautions arm,

    Lest anybody spy the blood

    And You’re hurt exclaim!

    IX

    The heart asks pleasure first,

    And then, excuse from pain;

    And then, those little anodynes

    That deaden suffering;

    And then, to go to sleep;

    And then, if it should be

    The will of its Inquisitor,

    The liberty to die.

    X

    IN A LIBRARY

    A precious, mouldering pleasure ’tis

    To meet an antique book,

    In just the dress his century wore;

    A privilege, I think,

    His venerable hand to take,

    And warming in our own,

    A passage back, or two, to make

    To times when he was young.

    His quaint opinions to inspect,

    His knowledge to unfold

    On what concerns our mutual mind,

    The literature of old;

    What interested scholars most,

    What competitions ran

    When Plato was a certainty.

    And Sophocles a man;

    When Sappho was a living girl,

    And Beatrice wore

    The gown that Dante deified.

    Facts, centuries before,

    He traverses familiar,

    As one should come to town

    And tell you all your dreams were true;

    He lived where dreams were sown.

    His presence is enchantment,

    You beg him not to go;

    Old volumes shake their vellum heads

    And tantalize, just so.

    XI

    Much madness is divinest sense

    To a discerning eye;

    Much sense the starkest madness.

    ’Tis the majority

    In this, as all, prevails.

    Assent, and you are sane;

    Demur,—you’re straightway dangerous,

    And handled with a chain.

    XII

    I asked no other thing,

    No other was denied.

    I offered Being for it;

    The mighty merchant smiled.

    Brazil? He twirled a button,

    Without a glance my way:

    "But, madam, is there nothing else

    That we can show to-day?"

    XIII

    EXCLUSION

    The soul selects her own society,

    Then shuts the door;

    On her divine majority

    Obtrude no more.

    Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing

    At her low gate;

    Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling

    Upon her mat.

    I’ve known her from an ample nation

    Choose one;

    Then close the valves of her attention

    Like stone.

    XIV

    THE SECRET

    Some things that fly there be,—

    Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:

    Of these no elegy.

    Some things that stay there be,—

    Grief, hills, eternity:

    Nor this behooveth me.

    There are, that resting, rise.

    Can I expound the skies?

    How still the riddle lies!

    XV

    THE LONELY HOUSE

    I know some lonely houses off the road

    A robber’d like the look of,—

    Wooden barred,

    And windows hanging low,

    Inviting to

    A portico,

    Where two could creep:

    One hand the tools,

    The other peep

    To make sure all’s asleep.

    Old-fashioned eyes,

    Not easy to surprise!

    How orderly the kitchen’d look by night,

    With just a clock,—

    But they could gag the tick,

    And mice won’t bark;

    And so the walls don’t tell,

    None will.

    A pair of spectacles ajar just stir—

    An almanac’s aware.

    Was it the mat winked,

    Or a nervous star?

    The moon slides down the stair

    To see who’s there.

    There’s plunder,—where?

    Tankard, or spoon,

    Earring, or stone,

    A watch, some ancient brooch

    To match the grandmamma,

    Staid sleeping there.

    Day rattles, too,

    Stealth’s slow;

    The sun has got as far

    As the third sycamore.

    Screams chanticleer,

    Who’s there?

    And echoes, trains away,

    Sneer—Where?

    While the old couple, just astir,

    Fancy the sunrise left the door ajar!

    XVI

    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.

    XVII

    DAWN

    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.

    XVIII

    THE BOOK OF MARTYRS

    Read, sweet, how others strove,

    Till we are stouter;

    What they renounced,

    Till we are less afraid;

    How many times they bore

    The faithful witness,

    Till we are helped,

    As if a kingdom cared!

    Read then of faith

    That shone above the fagot;

    Clear strains of hymn

    The river could not drown;

    Brave names of men

    And celestial women,

    Passed out of record

    Into renown!

    XIX

    THE MYSTERY OF PAIN

    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.

    XX

    I taste a liquor never brewed,

    From tankards scooped in pearl;

    Not all the vats upon the Rhine

    Yield such an alcohol!

    Inebriate of air am I,

    And debauchee of dew,

    Reeling, through endless summer days,

    From inns of molten blue.

    When landlords turn the drunken bee

    Out of the foxglove’s door,

    When butterflies renounce their drams,

    I shall but drink the more!

    Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,

    And saints to windows run,

    To see the little tippler

    Leaning against the sun!

    XXI

    A BOOK

    He ate and drank the precious words,

    His spirit grew robust;

    He knew no more that he was poor,

    Nor that his frame was dust.

    He danced along the dingy days,

    And this bequest of wings

    Was but a book. What liberty

    A loosened spirit brings!

    XXII

    I had no time to hate, because

    The grave would hinder me,

    And life was not so ample I

    Could finish enmity.

    Nor had I time to love; but since

    Some industry must be,

    The little toil of love, I thought,

    Was large enough for me.

    XXIII

    UNRETURNING

    ’Twas such a little, little boat

    That toddled down the bay!

    ’Twas such a gallant, gallant sea

    That beckoned it away!

    ’Twas such

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