First series

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 brought 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

 
[Published in "A Masque of Poets"
at the request of "H.H.," the author's
fellow-townswoman and friend.]
 
 
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!
 

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

 
'T is so much joy! 'T is 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;
'T is 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 't is
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.
'T is 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

 
'T was such a little, little boat
That toddled down the bay!
'T was such a gallant, gallant sea
That beckoned it away!
 
 
'T was such a greedy, greedy wave
That licked it from the coast;
Nor ever guessed the stately sails
My little craft was lost!
 

XXIV

 
Whether my bark went down at sea,
Whether she met with gales,
Whether to isles enchanted
She bent her docile sails;
 
 
By what mystic mooring
She is held to-day, —
This is the errand of the eye
Out upon the bay.
 

XXV

 
Belshazzar had a letter, —
He never had but one;
Belshazzar's correspondent
Concluded and begun
In that immortal copy
The conscience of us all
Can read without its glasses
On revelation's wall.
 

XXVI

 
The brain within its groove
Runs evenly and true;
But let a splinter swerve,
'T were easier for you
To put the water back
When floods have slit the hills,
And scooped a turnpike for themselves,
And blotted out the mills!
 

II. LOVE

I

MINE

 
Mine by the right of the white election!
Mine by the royal seal!
Mine by the sign in the scarlet prison
Bars cannot conceal!
 
 
Mine, here in vision and in veto!
Mine, by the grave's repeal
Titled, confirmed, – delirious charter!
Mine, while the ages steal!
 

II

BEQUEST

 
You left me, sweet, two legacies, —
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;
 
 
You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.
 

III

 
Alter? When the hills do.
Falter? When the sun
Question if his glory
Be the perfect one.
 
 
Surfeit? When the daffodil
Doth of the dew:
Even as herself, O friend!
I will of you!
 

IV

SUSPENSE

 
Elysium is as far as to
The very nearest room,
If in that room a friend await
Felicity or doom.
 
 
What fortitude the soul contains,
That it can so endure
The accent of a coming foot,
The opening of a door!
 

V

SURRENDER

 
Doubt me, my dim companion!
Why, God would be content
With but a fraction of the love
Poured thee without a stint.
The whole of me, forever,
What more the woman can, —
Say quick, that I may dower thee
With last delight I own!
 
 
It cannot be my spirit,
For that was thine before;
I ceded all of dust I knew, —
What opulence the more
Had I, a humble maiden,
Whose farthest of degree
Was that she might,
Some distant heaven,
Dwell timidly with thee!
 

VI

 
If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.
 
 
If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.
 
 
If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.
 
 
If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.
 
 
But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.
 

VII

WITH A FLOWER

 
I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too —
And angels know the rest.
 
 
I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.
 

VIII

PROOF

 
That I did always love,
I bring thee proof:
That till I loved
I did not love enough.
 
 
That I shall love alway,
I offer thee
That love is life,
And life hath immortality.
 
 
This, dost thou doubt, sweet?
Then have I
Nothing to show
But Calvary.
 

IX

 
Have you got a brook in your little heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink,
And shadows tremble so?
 
 
And nobody knows, so still it flows,
That any brook is there;