Emily Dickinson (183086). Complete Poems. 1924.

Part One: 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 ones 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 Times consummate plush