Poems by Emily Dickinson, Series One

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.