Poems of Emily Dickinson, series 2 | Page 4

to arrange the poems with general chronologic accuracy.
As a rule, the verses were without titles; but "A Country Burial," "A Thunder-Storm," "The Humming-Bird," and a few others were named by their author, frequently at the end,--sometimes only in the accompanying note, if sent to a friend.
The variation of readings, with the fact that she often wrote in pencil and not always clearly, have at times thrown a good deal of responsibility upon her Editors. But all interference not?absolutely inevitable has been avoided. The very roughness of her rendering is part of herself, and not lightly to be touched; for it seems in many cases that she intentionally avoided the smoother and more usual rhymes.
Like impressionist pictures, or Wagner's rugged music, the very absence of conventional form challenges attention. In Emily Dickinson's exacting hands, the especial, intrinsic fitness of a particular order of words might not be sacrificed to anything virtually extrinsic; and her verses all show a strange cadence of inner rhythmical music. Lines are always daringly constructed, and the "thought-rhyme" appears frequently,--appealing, indeed, to an unrecognized sense more elusive than hearing.
Emily Dickinson scrutinized everything with clear-eyed frankness. Every subject was proper ground for legitimate study, even the sombre facts of death and burial, and the unknown life beyond. She touches these themes sometimes lightly, sometimes almost?humorously, more often with weird and peculiar power; but she is never by any chance frivolous or trivial. And while, as one critic has said, she may exhibit toward God "an Emersonian self-possession," it was because she looked upon all life with a candor as unprejudiced as it is rare.
She had tried society and the world, and found them lacking. She was not an invalid, and she lived in seclusion from no?love-disappointment. Her life was the normal blossoming of a nature introspective to a high degree, whose best thought could not exist in pretence.
Storm, wind, the wild March sky, sunsets and dawns; the birds and bees, butterflies and flowers of her garden, with a few trusted human friends, were sufficient companionship. The coming of the first robin was a jubilee beyond crowning of monarch or birthday of pope; the first red leaf hurrying through "the altered air," an epoch. Immortality was close about her; and while never morbid or melancholy, she lived in its presence.
MABEL LOOMIS TODD.
AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS,
August, I891.
My nosegays are for captives;
Dim, long-expectant eyes,?Fingers denied the plucking,
Patient till paradise,
To such, if they should whisper
Of morning and the moor,?They bear no other errand,
And I, no other prayer.
I.
LIFE.
I.
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 frog?To tell your name the livelong day?To an admiring bog!
II.
I bring an unaccustomed wine?To lips long parching, next to mine,?And summon them to drink.
Crackling with fever, they essay;?I turn my brimming eyes away,?And come next hour to look.
The hands still hug the tardy glass;?The lips I would have cooled, alas!?Are so superfluous cold,
I would as soon attempt to warm?The bosoms where the frost has lain?Ages beneath the mould.
Some other thirsty there may be?To whom this would have pointed me?Had it remained to speak.
And so I always bear the cup?If, haply, mine may be the drop?Some pilgrim thirst to slake, --
If, haply, any say to me,?"Unto the little, unto me,"?When I at last awake.
III.
The nearest dream recedes, unrealized.
The heaven we chase?Like the June bee?Before the school-boy?Invites the race;?Stoops to an easy clover --?Dips -- evades -- teases -- deploys;
Then to the royal clouds?Lifts his light pinnace?Heedless of the boy?Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.
Homesick for steadfast honey,?Ah! the bee flies not?That brews that rare variety.
IV.
We play at paste,?Till qualified for pearl,?Then drop the paste,?And deem ourself a fool.?The shapes, though, were similar,?And our new hands?Learned gem-tactics?Practising sands.
V.
I found the phrase to every thought?I ever had, but one;?And that defies me, -- as a hand?Did try to chalk the sun
To races nurtured in the dark; --?How would your own begin??Can blaze be done in cochineal,?Or noon in mazarin?
VI.
HOPE.
Hope is the thing with feathers?That 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 storm?That could abash the little bird?That 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.
VII.
THE WHITE HEAT.
Dare you see a soul at the white heat?
Then crouch within the door.?Red is the fire's common tint;
But when the vivid ore
Has sated flame's conditions,
Its quivering substance plays?Without a color but the light
Of unanointed blaze.
Least village boasts its blacksmith,
Whose anvil's even din?Stands symbol for the finer forge
That soundless tugs within,
Refining these impatient ores
With hammer and with blaze,?Until the designated light
Repudiate the forge.
VIII.
TRIUMPHANT.
Who never lost, are unprepared?A coronet to find;?Who never thirsted, flagons?And cooling tamarind.
Who