Emily Dickinson

The Complete Poems (1924)

Table of Contents

Life

• This is my letter to the world

• Success is counted sweetest
• Our share of night to bear
• Soul, wilt thou toss again?
• 'T is so much joy!
• Glee! the great storm is over!
• If I can stop one heart from breaking
• Within my reach!
• A wounded deer leaps highest
• The heart asks pleasure first
• A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
• Much madness is divinest sense
• I asked no other thing
• The soul selects her own society
• Some things that fly there be
• I know some lonely houses off the road
• To fight aloud is very brave
• When night is almost done
• Read, sweet, how others strove
• Pain has an element of blank
• I taste a liquor never brewed
• He ate and drank the precious words
• I had no time to hate, because
• 'T was such a little, little boat
• Whether my bark went down at sea
• Belshazzar had a letter
• The brain within its groove
• I 'm nobody! Who are you?
• I bring an unaccustomed wine
• The nearest dream recedes, unrealized
• We play at paste
• I found the phrase to every thought
• Hope is the thing with feathers
• Dare you see a soul at the white heat?
• Who never lost, are unprepared
• I can wade grief
• I never hear the word `escape'
• For each ecstatic instant
• Through the straight pass of suffering
• I meant to have but modest needs
• The thought beneath so slight a film
• The soul unto itself
• Surgeons must be very careful
• I like to see it lap the miles
• The show is not the show
• Delight becomes pictorial
• A thought went up my mind to-day
• Is Heaven a physician?
• Though I get home how late, how late!
• A poor torn heart, a tattered heart
• I should have been too glad, I see
• It tossed and tossed
• Victory comes late
• God gave a loaf to every bird
• Experiment to me
• My country need not change her gown
• Faith is a fine invention
• Except the heaven had come so near
• Portraits are to daily faces
• I took my power in my hand
• A shady friend for torrid days
• Each life converges to some centre
• Before I got my eye put out
• Talk with prudence to a beggar
• He preached upon `breadth'
• Good night! which put the candle out?
• When I hoped I feared
• A deed knocks first at thought
• Mine enemy is growing old
• Remorse is memory awake
• The body grows outside
• Undue significance a starving man attaches
• Heart not so heavy as mine
• I many times thought peace had come
• Unto my books so good to turn
• This merit hath the worst
• I had been hungry all the years
• I gained it so
• To learn the transport by the pain
• I years had been from home
• Prayer is the little implement
• I know that he exists
• Musicians wrestle everywhere
• Just lost when I was saved!
• 'T is little I could care for pearls
• Superiority to fate
• Hope is a subtle glutton
• Forbidden fruit a flavor has
• Heaven is what I cannot reach!
• A word is dead
• To venerate the simple days
• It 's such a little thing to weep
• Drowning is not so pitiful
• How still the bells in steeples stand
• If the foolish call them `flowers'
• Could mortal lip divine
• My life closed twice before its close
• We never know how high we are
• While I was fearing it, it came
• There is no frigate like a book
• Who has not found the heaven below
• A face devoid of love or grace
• I had a guinea golden
• From all the jails the boys and girls
• Few get enough,--enough is one
• Upon the gallows hung a wretch
• I felt a cleavage in my mind
• The reticent volcano keeps
• If recollecting were forgetting
• The farthest thunder that I heard
• On the bleakness of my lot
• A door just opened on a street
• Are friends delight or pain?
• Ashes denote that fire was
• Fate slew him, but he did not drop
• Finite to fail, but infinite to venture
• I measure every grief I meet
• I have a king who does not speak
• It dropped so low in my regard
• To lose one's faith surpasses
• I had a daily bliss
• I worked for chaff, and earning wheat
• Life, and Death, and Giants
• Our lives are Swiss
• Remembrance has a rear and front
• To hang our head ostensibly
• The brain is wider than the sky
• The bone that has no marrow
• The past is such a curious creature
• To help our bleaker parts
• What soft, cherubic creatures
• Who never wanted,--maddest joy
• It might be easier
• You cannot put a fire out
• A modest lot, a fame `petite'
• Is bliss, then, such abyss
• I stepped from plank to plank
• One day is there of the series
• Softened by Time's consummate plush

Nature

• My nosegays are for captives

• Nature, the gentlest mother
• Will there really be a morning?
• At half-past three a single bird
• The day came slow, till five o'clock
• The sun just touched the morning
• The robin is the one
• From cocoon forth a butterfly
• Before you thought of spring
• An altered look about the hills
• `Whose are the little beds,' I asked
• Pigmy seraphs gone astray
• To hear an oriole sing
• One of the ones that Midas touched
• I dreaded that first robin so
• A route of evanescence
• The skies can't keep their secret!
• Who robbed the woods
• Two butterflies went out at noon
• I started early, took my dog
• Arcturus is his other name
• An awful tempest mashed the air
• An everywhere of silver
• A bird came down the walk
• A narrow fellow in the grass
• The mushroom is the elf of plants
• There came a wind like a bugle
• A spider sewed at night
• I know a place where summer strives
• The one that could repeat the summer day
• The wind tapped like a tired man
• Nature rarer uses yellow
• The leaves, like women, interchange
• How happy is the little stone
• It sounded as if the streets were running
• The rat is the concisest tenant
• Frequently the woods are pink
• The wind begun to rock the grass
• South winds jostle them
• Bring me the sunset in a cup
• She sweeps with many-colored brooms
• Like mighty footlights burned the red
• Where ships of purple gently toss
• Blazing in gold and quenching in purple
• Farther in summer than the birds
• As imperceptibly as grief
• It can't be summer,--that got through
• The gentian weaves her fringes
• God made a little gentian
• Besides the autumn poets sing
• It sifts from leaden sieves
• No brigadier throughout the year
• New feet within my garden go
• Pink, small, and punctual
• The murmur of a bee
• Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower?
• The pedigree of honey
• Some keep the Sabbath going to church
• The bee is not afraid of me
• Some rainbow coming from the fair!
• The grass so little has to do
• A little road not made of man
• A drop fell on the apple tree
• A something in a summer's day
• This is the land the sunset washes
• Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
• There is a flower that bees prefer
• Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
• As children bid the guest good-night
• Angels in the early morning
• So bashful when I spied her
• It makes no difference abroad
• The mountain sat upon the plain
• I 'll tell you how the sun rose
• The butterfly's assumption-gown
• Of all the sounds despatched abroad
• Apparently with no surprise
• 'T was later when the summer went
• These are the days when birds come back
• The morns are meeker than they were
• The sky is low, the clouds are mean
• I think the hemlock likes to stand
• There's a certain slant of light
• The springtime's pallid landscape
• She slept beneath a tree
• A light exists in spring
• A lady red upon the hill
• Dear March, come in!
• We like March, his shoes are purple
• Not knowing when the dawn will come
• A murmur in the trees to note
• Morning is the place for dew
• To my quick ear the leaves conferred
• A sepal, petal, and a thorn
• High from the earth I heard a bird
• The spider as an artist
• What mystery pervades a well!
• To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee
• It 's like the light
• A dew sufficed itself
• His bill an auger is
• Sweet is the swamp with its secrets
• Could I but ride indefinite
• The moon was but a chin of gold
• The bat is dun with wrinkled wings
• You 've seen balloons set, haven't you?
• The cricket sang
• Drab habitation of whom?
• A sloop of amber slips away
• Of bronze and blaze
• How the old mountains drip with sunset
• The murmuring of bees has ceased

Love

• It 's all I have to bring to-day

• Mine by the right of the white election!
• You left me, sweet, two legacies
• Alter? When the hills do
• Elysium is as far as to
• Doubt me, my dim companion!
• If you were coming in the fall
• I hide myself within my flower
• That I did always love
• Have you got a brook in your little heart
• As if some little Arctic flower
• My river runs to thee
• I cannot live with you
• There came a day at summer's full
• I 'm ceded, I 've stopped being theirs
• 'T was a long parting, but the time
• I 'm wife; I 've finished that
• She rose to his requirement, dropped
• Come slowly, Eden!
• Of all the souls that stand create
• I have no life but this
• Your riches taught me poverty
• I gave myself to him
• Going to him! Happy letter! Tell him
• The way I read a letter's this
• Wild nights! Wild nights!
• The night was wide, and furnished scant
• Did the harebell loose her girdle
• A charm invests a face
• The rose did caper on her cheek
• In lands I never saw, they say
• The moon is distant from the sea
• He put the belt around my life
• I held a jewel in my fingers
• What if I say I shall not wait?
• Proud of my broken heart
• My worthiness is all my doubt
• Love is anterior to life
• One blessing had I, than the rest
• When roses cease to bloom, dear
• Summer for thee grant I may be
• Split the lark and you 'll find the music
• To lose thee, sweeter than to gain
• Poor little heart!
• There is a word
• I 've got an arrow here
• He fumbles at your spirit
• Heart, we will forget him!
• Father, I bring thee not myself
• We outgrow love like other things
• Not with a club the heart is broken
• My friend must be a bird
• He touched me, so I live to know
• Let me not mar that perfect dream
• I live with him, I see his face
• I envy seas whereon he rides
• A solemn thing it was, I said
• Title divine is mine

Time and Eternity

• One dignity delays for all
• Delayed till she had ceased to know
• Departed to the judgment
• Safe in their alabaster chambers
• On this long storm the rainbow rose
• My cocoon tightens, colors tease
• Exultation is the going
• Look back on time with kindly eyes
• A train went through a burial gate
• I died for beauty, but was scarce
• How many times these low feet staggered
• I like a look of agony
• That short, potential stir
• I went to thank her
• I 've seen a dying eye
• The clouds their backs together laid
• I never saw a moor
• God permits industrious angels
• To know just how he suffered would be dear
• The last night that she lived
• Not in this world to see his face
• The bustle in a house
• I reason, earth is short
• Afraid? Of whom am I afraid?
• The sun kept setting, setting still
• Two swimmers wrestled on the spar
• Because I could not stop for Death
• She went as quiet as the dew
• At last to be identified!
• Except to heaven, she is nought
• Death is a dialogue between
• It was too late for man
• When I was small, a woman died
• The daisy follows soft the sun
• No rack can torture me
• I lost a world the other day
• If I should n't be alive
• Sleep is supposed to be
• I shall know why, when time is over
• I never lost as much but twice
• Let down the bars, O Death!
• Going to heaven!
• At least to pray is left, is left
• Step lightly on this narrow spot!
• Morns like these we parted
• A death-blow is a life-blow to some
• I read my sentence steadily
• I have not told my garden yet
• They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars
• The only ghost I ever saw
• Some, too fragile for winter winds
• As by the dead we love to sit
• Death sets a thing significant
• I went to heaven
• Their height in heaven comforts not
• There is a shame of nobleness
• A triumph may be of several kinds
• Pompless no life can pass away
• I noticed people disappeared
• I had no cause to be awake
• If anybody's friend be dead
• Our journey had advanced
• Ample make this bed
• On such a night, or such a night
• Essential oils are wrung
• I lived on dread; to those who know
• If I should die
• Her final summer was it
• One need not be a chamber to be haunted
• She died,--this was the way she died
• Wait till the majesty of Death
• Went up a year this evening!
• Taken from men this morning
• What inn is this
• It was not death, for I stood up
• I should not dare to leave my friend
• Great streets of silence led away
• A throe upon the features
• Of tribulation these are they
• I think just how my shape will rise
• After a hundred years
• Lay this laurel on the one
• This world is not conclusion
• We learn in the retreating
• They say that `time assuages'
• We cover thee, sweet face
• That is solemn we have ended
• The stimulus, beyond the grave
• Given in marriage unto thee
• That such have died enables us
• They won't frown always--some sweet day
• 'T is an honorable thought
• The distance that the dead have gone
• How dare the robins sing
• Death is like the insect
• 'T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou
• Each that we lose takes part of us
• Not any higher stands the grave
• As far from pity as complaint
• 'T is whiter than an Indian pipe
• She laid her docile crescent down
• Bless God, he went as soldiers
• Immortal is an ample word
• Where every bird is bold to go
• The grave my little cottage is
• This was in the white of the year
• Sweet hours have perished here
• Me! Come! My dazzled face
• From use she wandered now a year
• I wish I knew that woman's name
• Bereaved of all, I went abroad
• I felt a funeral in my brain
• I meant to find her when I came
• I sing to use the waiting
• A sickness of this world it most occasions
• Superfluous were the sun
• So proud she was to die
• Tie the strings to my life, my Lord
• The dying need but little, dear
• There 's something quieter than sleep
• The soul should always stand ajar
• Three weeks passed since I had seen her
• I breathed enough to learn the trick
• I wonder if the sepulchre
• If tolling bell I ask the cause
• If I may have it when it 's dead
• Before the ice is in the pools
• I heard a fly buzz when I died
• Adrift! A little boat adrift!
• There's been a death in the opposite house
• We never know we go,--when we are going
• It struck me every day
• Water is taught by thirst
• We thirst at first,--'t is Nature's act
• A clock stopped--not the mantel's
• All overgrown by cunning moss
• A toad can die of light!
• Far from love the Heavenly Father
• A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
• 'T was just this time last year I died
• On this wondrous sea

The Single Hound

• One sister have I in our house

• Adventure most unto itself
• The Soul that has a Guest
• Except the smaller size, no Lives are round
• Fame is a fickle food
• The right to perish might be thought
• Peril as a possession
• When Etna basks and purrs
• Reverse cannot befall that fine Prosperity
• To be alive is power
• Witchcraft has not a pedigree
• Exhilaration is the Breeze
• No romance sold unto
• If what we could were what we would
• Perception of an
• No other can reduce
• The blunder is to estimate
• My Wheel is in the dark
• There is another Loneliness
• So gay a flower bereaved the mind
• Glory is that bright tragic thing
• The missing All prevented me
• His mind, of man a secret makes
• The suburbs of a secret
• The difference between despair
• There is a solitude of space
• The props assist the house
• The gleam of an heroic act
• Of Death the sharpest function
• Down Time's quaint stream
• I bet with every Wind that blew
• The Future never spoke
• Two lengths has every day
• The Soul's superior instants
• Nature is what we see
• Ah, Teneriffe!
• She died at play
• `Morning' means `Milking' to the Farmer
• A little madness in the Spring
• I can't tell you, but you feel it
• Some Days retired from the rest
• Like Men and Women shadows walk
• The butterfly obtains
• Beauty crowds me till I die
• We spy the Forests and the Hills
• I never told the buried gold
• The largest fire ever known
• Bloom upon the Mountain, stated
• March is the month of expectation
• The Duties of the Wind are few
• The Winds drew off
• I think that the root of the Wind is Water
• So, from the mould
• The long sigh of the Frog
• A cap of lead across the sky
• I send two Sunsets
• Of this is Day composed
• The Hills erect their purple heads
• Lightly stepped a yellow star
• The Moon upon her fluent route
• Like some old-fashioned miracle
• Glowing is her Bonnet
• Forever cherished be the tree
• The Ones that disappeared are back
• Those final Creatures,--who they are
• Summer begins to have the look
• A prompt, executive Bird is the Jay
• Like brooms of steel
• These are the days that Reindeer love
• Follow wise Orion
• In winter, in my room
• Not any sunny tone
• For Death,--or rather
• Dropped into the
• This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies
• 'T was comfort in her dying room
• Too cold is this
• I watched her face to see which way
• To-day or this noon
• I see thee better in the dark
• Low at my problem bending
• If pain for peace prepares
• I fit for them
• Not one by Heaven defrauded stay
• The feet of people walking home
• We should not mind so small a flower
• To the staunch Dust we safe commit thee
• Her `Last Poems'
• Immured in Heaven! What a Cell!
• I 'm thinking of that other morn
• The overtakelessness of those
• The Look of Thee, what is it like?
• The Devil, had he fidelity
• Papa above!
• Not when we know
• Elijah's wagon knew no thill
• `Remember me,' implored the Thief
• To this apartment deep
• Sown in dishonor?
• Through lane it lay, through bramble
• Who is it seeks my pillow nights?
• His Cheek is his Biographer
• `Heavenly Father,' take to thee
• The sweets of Pillage can be known
• The Bible is an antique volume
• A little over Jordan
• Dust is the only secret
• Ambition cannot find him
• Eden is that old-fashioned House
• Candor, my tepid Friend
• Speech is a symptom of affection
• Who were `the Father and the Son'
• That Love is all there is
• The luxury to apprehend
• The Sea said `Come' to the Brook
• All I may, if small
• Love reckons by itself alone
• The inundation of the Spring
• No Autumn's intercepting chill
• Volcanoes be in Sicily
• Distance is not the realm of Fox
• The treason of an accent
• How destitute is he
• Crisis is sweet and, set of Heart
• To tell the beauty would decrease
• To love thee, year by year
• I showed her heights she never saw
• On my volcano grows the grass
• If I could tell how glad I was
• Her Grace is all she has
• No matter where the Saints abide
• To see her is a picture
• So set its sun in thee
• Had this one day not been
• That she forgot me was the least
• The incidents of Love
• A little overflowing word
• Just so, Jesus raps--He does not weary
• Safe Despair it is that raves
• The Face we choose to miss
• Of so divine a loss
• The healed Heart shows its shallow scar
• Give little anguish
• To pile like Thunder to its close
• The Stars are old, that stood for me
• All circumstances are the frame
• I did not reach thee