Passages from Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete

What keeps singing in the worst weather and never sends a bill.

Hope is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;And sore must be the stormThat could abash the little birdThat kept so many warm.I ‘ve heard it in the chillest land,And on the strangest sea;Yet, never, in extremity,It asked a crumb of me.

A small, delighted conspiracy against everyone who needs to be noticed.

I’m nobody! Who are you?Are you nobody, too?Then there ‘s a pair of us — don’t tell!They ‘d banish us, you know.How dreary to be somebody!How public, like a frogTo tell your name the livelong dayTo an admiring bog!

An argument that your mind outweighs everything it ever looks at.

The brain is wider than the sky,For, put them side by side,The one the other will includeWith ease, and you beside.The brain is deeper than the sea,For, hold them, blue to blue,The one the other will absorb,As sponges, buckets do.The brain is just the weight of God,For, lift them, pound for pound,And they will differ, if they do,As syllable from sound.

Two strangers lying side by side find they gave their lives to one cause.

I died for beauty, but was scarceAdjusted in the tomb,When one who died for truth was lainIn an adjoining room.He questioned softly why I failed?“For beauty,” I replied.“And I for truth, — the two are one;We brethren are,” he said.And so, as kinsmen met a night,We talked between the rooms,Until the moss had reached our lips,And covered up our names.

Why the scariest house is the one you carry around.

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,One need not be a house;The brain has corridors surpassingMaterial place.Far safer, of a midnight meetingExternal ghost,Than an interior confrontingThat whiter host.Far safer through an Abbey gallop,The stones achase,Than, moonless, one’s own self encounterIn lonesome place.Ourself, behind ourself concealed,Should startle most;

How to wait for someone by folding up the months.

If you were coming in the fall,I’d brush the summer byWith 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 droppedInto Van Diemen’s land.

Getting drunk on nothing but a summer morning.

I taste a liquor never brewed,From tankards scooped in pearl;Not all the vats upon the RhineYield 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 beeOut of the foxglove’s door,When butterflies renounce their drams,I shall but drink the more!

Why the loudest laughter sometimes covers the deepest wound.

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 redderJust where the hectic stings!Mirth is the mail of anguish,In which it cautions arm,Lest anybody spy the bloodAnd “You’re hurt” exclaim!

A case for leaving some mysteries unbribed.

The skies can’t keep their secret!They tell it to the hills —The hills just tell the orchards —And they the daffodils!A bird, by chance, that goes that waySoft overheard the whole.If I should bribe the little bird,Who knows but she would tell?I think I won’t, however,It’s finer not to know;If summer were an axiom,What sorcery had snow?

Dread, it turns out, can be worse than the thing itself.

While I was fearing it, it came,But came with less of fear,Because that fearing it so longHad almost made it dear.There is a fitting a dismay,A fitting a despair.‘Tis harder knowing it is due,Than knowing it is here.The trying on the utmost,The morning it is new,Is terribler than wearing itA whole existence through.