Poems of Emily Dickinson, series 2 | Page 8

brooks in meadows run;
To stay the homesick, homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore
Haunted
by native lands, the while,
And blue, beloved air --
This is the sovereign anguish,
This, the signal woe!
These are the
patient laureates
Whose voices, trained below,
Ascend in ceaseless carol,
Inaudible, indeed,
To us, the duller
scholars
Of the mysterious bard!

LIII.
RETURNING.
I years had been from home,
And now, before the door,
I dared not
open, lest a face
I never saw before
Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business, --
just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?
I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near;
The silence
like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear.
I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and
the dead had faced,
But never quaked before.
I fitted to the latch
My hand, with trembling care,
Lest back the
awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there.
I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears,
and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house.
LIV.
PRAYER.
Prayer is the little implement
Through which men reach
Where
presence is denied them.
They fling their speech
By means of it in God's ear;
If then He hear,
This sums the
apparatus
Comprised in prayer.
LV.
I know that he exists
Somewhere, in silence.
He has hid his rare life

From our gross eyes.

'T is an instant's play,
'T is a fond ambush,
Just to make bliss
Earn
her own surprise!
But should the play
Prove piercing earnest,
Should the glee glaze

In death's stiff stare,
Would not the fun
Look too expensive?
Would not the jest
Have
crawled too far?
LVI.
MELODIES UNHEARD.
Musicians wrestle everywhere:
All day, among the crowded air,
I
hear the silver strife;
And -- waking long before the dawn --
Such
transport breaks upon the town
I think it that "new life!"
It is not bird, it has no nest;
Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed,

Nor tambourine, nor man;
It is not hymn from pulpit read, --
The
morning stars the treble led
On time's first afternoon!
Some say it is the spheres at play!
Some say that bright majority
Of
vanished dames and men!
Some think it service in the place
Where
we, with late, celestial face,
Please God, shall ascertain!
LVII.
CALLED BACK.
Just lost when I was saved!
Just felt the world go by!
Just girt me
for the onset with eternity,
When breath blew back,
And on the
other side
I heard recede the disappointed tide!
Therefore, as one returned, I feel,
Odd secrets of the line to tell!

Some sailor, skirting foreign shores,
Some pale reporter from the
awful doors
Before the seal!

Next time, to stay!
Next time, the things to see
By ear unheard,

Unscrutinized by eye.
Next time, to tarry,
While the ages steal, --
Slow tramp the
centuries,
And the cycles wheel.
II.
LOVE.
I.
CHOICE.
Of all the souls that stand create
I have elected one.
When sense
from spirit files away,
And subterfuge is done;
When that which is and that which was
Apart, intrinsic, stand,
And
this brief tragedy of flesh
Is shifted like a sand;
When figures show their royal front
And mists are carved away, --

Behold the atom I preferred
To all the lists of clay!
II.
I have no life but this,
To lead it here;
Nor any death, but lest

Dispelled from there;
Nor tie to earths to come,
Nor action new,
Except through this
extent,
The realm of you.
III.
Your riches taught me poverty.
Myself a millionnaire
In little
wealths, -- as girls could boast, --
Till broad as Buenos Ayre,
You drifted your dominions
A different Peru;
And I esteemed all

poverty,
For life's estate with you.
Of mines I little know, myself,
But just the names of gems, --
The
colors of the commonest;
And scarce of diadems
So much that, did I meet the queen,
Her glory I should know:
But
this must be a different wealth,
To miss it beggars so.
I 'm sure 't is India all day
To those who look on you
Without a stint,
without a blame, --
Might I but be the Jew!
I 'm sure it is Golconda,
Beyond my power to deem, --
To have a
smile for mine each day,
How better than a gem!
At least, it solaces to know
That there exists a gold,
Although I
prove it just in time
Its distance to behold!
It 's far, far treasure to surmise,
And estimate the pearl
That slipped
my simple fingers through
While just a girl at school!
IV.
THE CONTRACT.
I gave myself to him,
And took himself for pay.
The solemn
contract of a life
Was ratified this way.
The wealth might disappoint,
Myself a poorer prove
Than this great
purchaser suspect,
The daily own of Love
Depreciate the vision;
But, till the merchant buy,
Still fable, in the
isles of spice,
The subtle cargoes lie.
At least, 't is mutual risk, --
Some found it mutual gain;
Sweet debt
of Life, -- each night to owe,
Insolvent, every noon.

V.
THE LETTER.
"GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him --
Tell him the page I did n't
write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the
pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried,
Then how they
waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your
pages,
So you