The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (26 page)

Our lives are Swiss
Our share of night to bear
P
Pain has an element of blank
Papa above! Regard a Mouse
Perception of an
Perhaps you’d like to buy a flower
Peril as a possession
Pigmy seraphs gone astray
Pink, small, and punctual
Pompless no life can pass away
Poor little heart!
Portraits are to daily faces
Prayer is the little implement
Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it
R
Read, sweet, how others strove
“Remember me,” implored the Thief
Remembrance has a rear and front
Remorse is memory awake
Reverse cannot befall the fine Prosperity
S
Safe Despair it is that raves
Safe in their alabaster chambers
She died at play
She died,—this was the way she died
She laid her docile crescent down
She rose to his requirement, dropped
She slept beneath a tree
She sweeps with many-colored brooms
She went as quiet as the dew
Sleep is supposed to be
So bashful when I spied her
So, from the mould
Softened by Time’s consummate plush
So gay a flower bereaved the mind
Some Days retired from the rest
Some keep the Sabbath going to church
Some rainbow coming from the fair!
Some things that fly there be
Some, too fragile for winter winds
So proud she was to die
So set its sun in thee
Soul, wilt thou toss again?
South winds jostle them
“Sown in dishonor?”
Speech is a symptom of affection
Split the lark and you’ll find the music
Step lightly on this narrow spot!
Success is counted sweetest
Summer begins to have the look
Summer for thee grant I may be
Superfluous were the sun
Superiority to fate
Surgeons must be very careful
Sweet hours have perished here
Sweet is the swamp with its secrets
T
Taken from men this morning
Talk with prudence to a beggar
That I did always love
That is solemn we have ended
That Love is all there is
That she forgot me was the least
That short, potential stir
That such have died enables us
The bat is dun with wrinkled wings
The bee is not afraid of me
The Bible is an antique volume
The blunder is to estimate
The body grows outside
The bone that has no marrow
The brain is wider than the sky
The brain within its groove
The bustle in a house
The butterfly obtains
The butterfly’s assumption-gown
The clouds their backs together laid
The cricket sang
The daisy follows soft the sun
The day came slow, till five o‘clock
The Devil, had he fidelity
The difference between despair
The distance that the dead have gone
The Duties of the Wind are few
The dying need but little, dear
The Face we choose to miss
The farthest thunder that I heard
The feet of people walking home
The Future never spoke
The gentian weaves her fringes
The gleam of an heroic act
The grass so little has to do
The grave my little cottage is
The healed Heart shows its shallow scar
The heart asks pleasure first
The Hills erect their purple heads
The incidents of Love
The inundation of the Spring
Their height in heaven comforts not
The largest fire ever known
The last night that she lived
The leaves, like women, interchange
The long sigh of the Frog
The Look of Thee, what is it like?
The luxury to apprehend
The missing All prevented me
The moon is distant from the sea
The Moon upon her fluent route
The moon was but a chin of gold
The morns are meeker than they were
The mountain sat upon the plain
The murmuring of bees has ceased
The murmur of a bee
The mushroom is the elf of plants
The nearest dream recedes, unrealized
The night was wide, and furnished scant
The Ones that disappeared are back
The one that could repeat the summer day
The only ghost I ever saw
The overtakelessness of those
The past is such a curious creature
The pedigree of honey
The props assist the house
The rat is the concisest tenant.
There came a day at summer’s full
There came a wind like a bugle
There is a flower that bees prefer
There is another Loneliness
There is a shame of nobleness
There is a solitude of space
There is a word
There is no frigate like a book
There’s a certain slant of light
There’s been a death in the opposite house
There’s something quieter than sleep
The reticent volcano keeps
The right to perish might be thought
The robin is the one
The rose did caper on her cheek
These are the days that Reindeer love
These are the days when birds come back
The Sea said “Come” to the Brook
The show is not the show
The skies can’t keep their secret!
The sky is low, the clouds are mean
The soul selects her own society
The soul should always stand ajar
The Soul’s superior instants
The Soul that has a Guest
The Soul unto itself
The spider as an artist
The springtime’s pallid landscape
The Stars are old, that stood for me
The stimulus, beyond the grave
The suburbs of a secret
The sun just touched the morning;
The sun kept setting, setting still
The sweets of Pillage can be known
The thought beneath so slight a film
The treason of an accent
The way I read a letter’s this
The wind begun to rock the grass
The Winds drew off
The wind tapped like a tired man
They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars
They say that “time assuages”
They won’t frown always,—some sweet day
This is my letter to the world,
This is the land the sunset washes
This merit hath the worst
This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies
This was in the white of the year
This world is not conclusion
Those final Creatures,—who they are—
Though I get home how late, how late!
Three weeks passed since I had seen her
Through lane it lay, through bramble
Through the straight pass of suffering
Tie the strings to my life, my Lord
’T is an honorable thought
’T is little I could care for pearls
’T is so much joy! ’T is so much joy!
’T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou
’T is whiter than an Indian pipe
Title divine is mine
To be alive is power
To-day or this noon
To fight aloud is very brave
To hang our head ostensibly
To hear an oriole sing
To help our bleaker parts
To know just how he suffered would be dear
To learn the transport by the pain
To lose one’s faith surpasses
To lose thee, sweeter than to gain
To love thee, year by year
To make a prairie it takes a clover
To my quick ear the leaves conferred
Too cold is this
To pile like Thunder to its close
To see her is a picture
To tell the beauty would decrease
To the staunch Dust we safe commit thee
To this apartment deep
To venerate the simple days
’T was a long parting, but the time
’T was comfort in her dying room
’T was just this time last year I died
’T was later when the summer went
’T was such a little, little boat
Two butterflies went out at noon
Two lengths has every day
Two swimmers wrestled on the spar
U
Undue significance a starving man attaches
Unto my books so good to turn
Upon the gallows hung a wretch
V
Victory comes late
Volcanoes be in Sicily
W
Wait till the majesty of Death
Water is taught by thirst
We cover thee, sweet face
We learn in the retreating
We like March, his shoes are purple
We never know how high we are
We never know we go,—when we are going
Went up a year this evening!
We outgrow love like other things
We play at paste
We should not mind so small a flower
We spy the Forests and the Hills
We thirst at first,—’t is Nature’s act
What if I say I shall not wait?
What inn is this
What mystery pervades a well!
What soft, cherubic creatures
When Etna basks and purrs
When I hoped I feared
When I was small, a woman died
When night is almost done
When roses cease to bloom, dear
Where every bird is bold to go
Where ships of purple gently toss
Whether my bark went down at sea
While I was fearing it, it came
Who has not found the heaven below
Who is it seeks my pillow nights?
Who never lost, are unprepared
Who never wanted,—maddest joy
Who robbed the woods
“Whose are the little beds,” I asked
Who were “the Father and the Son”
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Will there really be a morning?
Witchcraft has not a pedigree
Within my reach!
Y
You cannot put a fire out
You left me, sweet, two legacies
Your riches taught me poverty
You’ve seen balloons set, haven’t you?
1
Attractive, pretty (Scottish).
2
Rough, overgrown land.
3
Fluctuating, persistent fever, such as accompanies tuberculosis.
4
Things that soothe or eliminate pain.
5
Greek lyric poet (c.600 B.C.) of Lesbos, whose work survives only in fragments.
6
Beatrice Portinari, Dante’s muse, who appears in his epic poem
The Divine Comedy
(1308-1321).
7
Fine-grained calfskin, lambskin, or kidskin used for the pages and bindings of books.
8
Is necessary or proper for.
9
Tall, single-handled drinking vessel.
†Rooster.
10
Bundle of sticks or branches bound together.
11
Plant with speckled white, purplish, or yellow tubular flowers.
12
Small portions.
13
Angels of the highest order.
14
Small sailing ship.
15
Last king of Babylonia (c.540 B.C.); in the Bible, he was warned of his death by mysterious writing that appeared on the wall of his palace (see Daniel 5).
16
Try.
17
Reference to the Bible, Matthew 19:14: “But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me” (King James Version; henceforth KJV).
18
Small sailing ship.
19
Cochineal is a red dye made from female cochineal insects; mazarin is a deep purplish blue.
20
Large vessels for holding wine or other drinks.
21
Fruit of a tropical Asian tree, used to make cold drinks.
22
Francisco Pizarro (c.1475-1541 ), Spanish explorer and conqueror of Peru.
23
The reference is to the Himalaya, a range in south-central Asia.
24
Coins formerly used in Great Britain, worth about one-fourth of a penny.
25
Pledge of fidelity; betrothal.
26
God’s; Jehovah, a variation of Yahweh, is a name the ancient Hebrews used for
the deity.
27
Angels of the second-highest order.
28
The Apennines are a mountain chain in Italy.
29
Meaning a loud preacher or orator; in the Bible (Mark 3:14—17) Boanerges, “sons
of thunder,” is the surname Jesus gave to his disciples James and John.
30
British governmental department charged with the collection and management
of the national revenue.

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