Selected Works of Emily Dickinson

Selected Works of Emily Dickinson

A Country Burial

Ample make this bed,
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break
Excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.

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

Disenchantment

It dropped so low in my regard
I heard it hit the ground,
And go to pieces on the stones
At bottom of my mind;

Yet blamed the fate that fractured,
less than I reviled myself
For entertaining plated wares
Upon my silver shelf.

Power

You cannot put a fire out;
A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
Upon the slowest night.

You cannot fold a flood
And put it in a drawer,
Because the winds would find it out,
And tell your cedar floor.

Beauty crowds me till I die Beauty mercy have on me But if I expire today Let it be in sight of thee.	Presentiment - is that long Shadow - on the Lawn - Indicative that Suns go down - The Notice to the startled Grass That Darkness - is about to pass
Down Time's quaint stream Without an oar We are enforced to sail Our Port a secret Our Perchance a Gale What Skipper would incur the Risk What Buccaneer would ride Without a surety from the Wind Or schedule of the Tide.	Exultation is the going Of an inland soul to sea, Past the houses - past the headlands - Into deep Eternity Bred as we, among the mountains, Can the sailor understand The divine intoxication Of the first league out from land?
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant - Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind	I felt a clearing in my mind As if my brain had split; I tried to match it, seam by seam, But could not make them fit. The Thought behind I strove to join Unto the thought before, But sequence ravelled out of reach Like balls upon a floor.