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chapter 1. biography and main workschapter 1. biography and main workschapter 1. biography and main workschapter 1. biography and main works................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 115115115115
chapter 2. Introduction to “Emily Dickinson”chapter 2. Introduction to “Emily Dickinson”chapter 2. Introduction to “Emily Dickinson”chapter 2. Introduction to “Emily Dickinson”............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 117117117117
chapter 3. selected poems chapter 3. selected poems chapter 3. selected poems chapter 3. selected poems ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 119119119119
ATTENTION! NOTICE ABOUT COPYRIGHT
The texts that comprise this unit have been extracted from a selected bibliography. You MUST quote those sources – and not this booklet (“apostila”) - any time you use the texts to write an academic essay. You will find the page numbers of the original passages within square brackets, [ ], so that you can provide the correct bibliographical references. For more information on How to write an academic essay check the Professor’s website: www.letras.ufrj.br/veralima
UNIT III- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 1 & 3 MCMICHAEL, George [Editor]. Concise Anthology of American Literature. 2 a
edição. New York: Macmillan, 1986 CHAPTER 2
KNAPP, Bettina. Emily Dickinson. New York: Continuum, 1989. 202 pp.
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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EMILY DICKINSON, 1830-1886
chapter 1. biography and main works
George MCMICHAEL
[1025] One day in April 1862, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a poetry critic
for The Atlantic Monthly, received a letter from Emily Dickinson of Amherst,
Massachusetts, asking, "Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive?" The
four poems she enclosed provoked an immediate response and began a
correspondence that lasted twenty-two years. Although Emily Dickinson thanked her
"preceptor" Higginson for the "surgery" he performed on her poetry, she wanted his
encouragement more than his advice, and she politely ignored his suggestions for
regularizing her rough rhythms and imperfect rhymes and for correcting her spelling
and grammar. Recognizing Emily Dickinson's poetic genius, despite her violations of
poetic convention, Higginson remained her friend and adviser throughout her life,
and after her death he assisted in gathering her poems for publication.
Only eight of Emily Dickinson's poems were published while she lived, and it
was not until the appearance of Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890), four years after
her death, that her work became available to the general reading public for the first
time.^ The early critical estimates were mixed. Some reviewers found the poetry
"balderdash" suffering from lack of rhyme, faulty grammar, and incomprehensible
metaphors, a "farrago of illiterate and uneducated sentiment." But other readers
found them remarkably pointed and evocative. As the years passed and as more
poems were published, critical estimates grew more favorable until, with the
publication of all her known poetry, in The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955), the
shy, reclusive poet had come to be regarded, with Whitman and Poe, as one of
America's greatest lyric poets.
The range of Emily Dickinson's worldly experience was small by
any standard. Her entire life, except for brief visits to nearby Boston and
to Washington, D.C., was spent in and around her birthplace, Amherst.
The Dickinsons of Amherst were prominent. Her grandfather was a
founder of
Amherst College; for seventy years her father and then her
brother, both lawyers, served as College Treasurer and Trustee. Her
mother claimed [1026] Emily's affection, but not her wholehearted
respect: "Mother does not care for thought," she wrote to Higginson.
As Emily Dickinson grew older, she increasingly withdrew from
society, seldom leaving her garden and her large family house. There
she wrote poems and letters to her friends and watched the life of the
town from her upstairs bedroom window. Her friends, she said, were
her "estate," and among them were men, other than Higginson, her
father, and her brother, who profoundly affected her creative and
emotional life. One of them was her second "preceptor," the Reverend
Charles Wadsworth, whom she met in Philadelphia in the mid-1850$.
The facts of their relationship are obscure, but there is little doubt about
her love for him and for his "kindly spiritual counsel," although they
seldom met, and he was a married man with a family. His departure to
California perhaps caused the emotional crisis she experienced in 1862,
provoking a great creative outburst, for in that single year she wrote the
astonishing total of j 66 poems.
Emily Dickinson lived a more intense and passionate life than was
thought by neighbors and acquaintances who saw her only as an
eccentric maiden lady, the "moth" of Amherst, dressed only in white,
who flitted almost ghostlike through her house and garden. Not even
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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those closest to her knew fully the depth and extent of her emotions or that the
nearly 1,800 poems, tied neatly in packets found after her death, would reveal an
immensely complex and passionate sensibility.
Her subjects were love, death, nature, immortality, beauty. Written largely in
meters common to Protestant hymn books, her poems employed irregular rhythms,
off- or slant-rhymes, paradox, and a careful balancing of abstract Latinate and
concrete Anglo-Saxon words. Her lines were gnomic and her images kinesthetic,
highly concentrated, and intensely charged with feeling. Her greatest lyrics were on
the theme of death, which she typically personified as a monarch, a lord, or a kindly
but irresistible lover, yet her moods varied widely, from melancholy to exuberance,
grief to joy, leaden despair to spiritual intoxication.
Emily Dickinson's poetry at times descended to coyness and sentimentality.
She had no firsthand contact with contemporary writers or critics of the highest
order. Her favorite authors included Shakespeare, Keats, the Brownings, Ruskin, and
Sir Thomas Browne, whose uneasy balance of faith and skepticism she shared. Early
in life she rebelled against the Calvinism of the Amherst Congregational Church, yet
she retained the Calvinist tendency to look inwardly, and she had a Calvinist sense of
both the inherent beauty and the frightening coldness of the world. With her fellow
New Englanders Jonathan Edwards and Emerson, she perceived beauty in the
wholeness and harmonious relationships of nature, and like Edwards and Emerson
she has come to stand as a dominant figure in her nation's literary history, a poet
whose work reflects a spiritual unrest and a sense of the _ human predicament that
defy all easy categories.
FURTHER READING: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. T. Johnson, 1960, 1976; The Manuscript
Books of Emily Dickinson, ed. R. Franklin, 1981; The Letters of Emily Dickinson, 3 vols.,
ed. T. Johnson, 1955; J. Leyda, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson,
2 vols., 1960; G. Whicher, This Was a Poet, 1938, 1952, 1957; M.
Bingham, Ancestor's Brocades, 1945, 1967; R. Chase, Emily Dickinson,
1951; T.Johnson, Emily Dickinson, ig55;T. Ward, The Capsule of the
Mind, 1961; D. Higgins, Portrait of Emily Dickinson, 1967; The
Recognition of Emily Dickinson, ed. C. Blake and C. Wells, 1964; A. Gelpi,
Emily Dickinson, 1965; K. Lubbers, Emily Dickinson, the Critical
Revolution, 1968; J. Pickard, Emily Dickinson, an Introduction and
Interpretation, 1967; C. Anderson, Emily Dickinson's Poetry, 1960;
C.Griffith, The Long Shadow, Emily Dickinson's Tragic Poetry, 1964; R.
Miller, The Poetry of Emily Dickinson, 1968; E. Wylder, Emily
Dickinson's Manuscripts, 1971; R. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson,
1974; R. Weisbuch, Emily Dickinson's Poetry, 1975; P. Ferlazzo, Emily
Dickinson, 1976; S. Cameron, Lyric Time, Dickinson and the Limits of
Genre, 1979; K. Keller, The Only Kangaroo Among the Beauty, 1979; D.
Porter, Dickinson the Modern Idiom, 1981; J. Diehl, Dickinson and the
Romantic Imagination, 1981; J. Juhasz, The Undiscovered Continent,
Emily Dickinson and the Space of the Mind, 1983.
IMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANT!!
All references and numbering to Emily Dickinson’s poems are in
keeping with The Poems of Emily Dickinson, 3 vols.; ed. T. Johnson,
1955. That is the compilation about Emily Dickinson preferred in
scholarly research. However, not all anthologies – mainly the new ones
on the Internet – comply with Johnson’s numbering system.
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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chapter 2. Introduction to “Emily Dickinson”
Bettina KNAPP
[9] To read the poetry and letters of Emily Dickinson is to marvel at the
extraordinary modernity and rigor of her ideas, at the courage and strength of her
nonconformity, and at the manner in which she overcame patriarchal dominance. It
is to be excited and haunted by the mystery of her elusive thought, which lies buried
in what might be alluded to as the geological folds of her verse.
Dickinson's was a poetry for all time, no longer to be understood only in terms
of her immediate background in a puritanical, Transcendentalist-tinged nineteenth-
century small town. Her verbal and ideological innovations arose from her inborn
talent, but also stemmed in part from her boldness and heroic temperament; she kept
a firm desire to be emotionally and intellectually independent, as a person in her own
right. At a time when women enjoyed virtually no intellectual freedom, Dickinson
chose to carve out her own role. Although adhering to the strict social regulations
imposed on a refined Amherst girl, she nevertheless had a mind of her own and a will
of iron. No one could tell her how to think or how to write. So determined was she in
thinking things out for herself that she even rejected the tenets of her church. The
course she chose for herself is perhaps best understood when considering the fact
that she had come from very solid stock. Paradoxically, she was a product of her
background: a Protest-ant in the real sense of the word.
A spirit of contest, inquiry, and continuous transformation prevailed in
Dickinson's search for true form, meaning, and faith. Her analytical and probing mind
helped her to face pain and doubt and concomitantly increased her feelings of self-
worth.
[10]After its transition from the uncreated to the created, the inaudible to the
audible, the invisible to the visible, the word not only took on flesh but
became Dickinson's armament, her ammunition. The word was
Dickinson's livingness, actuality, dynamism. As it catalyzed and
interacted with other morphemes in the verse, the word impacted on
her and the reader as well.
For Dickinson, as for the mystic, language was a sign, a mask, a
protection, and a shelter for her oblique thoughts. It helped her to carve
the bedrock of her ambiguous and always fleeting feelings.
Verbalization was crucial in helping her face aspects of life to which she
reacted traumatically: Creation, Death, God, Love, Sex, Nature. Only in
hermetic terms could Dickinson convey the complexity and ambiguity of
her intellectual meanderings. Like the ancient Orphics and the modern
Surrealists, she manipulated her consecrated gleamings in encoded
messages, from timeless and spaceless regions. Drawing from her "box
of phantoms," which contained the nourishment necessary to recount
her turmoil, she engaged in her secret activity of writing in the privacy
and silence of her room:
Pain —has an Element of Blank— It cannot recollect When it begun—or if there were A time when it was not— It has no Future—but itself— Its Infinite contain Its Past—enlightened to perceive New Periods—of Pain. (#650)
Poetry, for Dickinson, was a celebration of .the creative power of
the word. Only partially articulated truths and ambiguous syntax were
molded by her into sculptured verse, which she then smoothed and
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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refined into what we might consider occult diachronic and synchronic progressions.
Placing her figures of speech and cryptic allusions in special spaces within the line,
Dickinson was able to locate and isolate nonmaterial thoughts and sensations,
thereby arousing the reader's fascination and spirit of inquiry.
That hers was a poetry both classical in quality and contemporary in technique
in no way intimates its accessibility. Quite the [11] contrary: Dickinson's verses are
for the most part impenetrable. Esoteric in nature, behind her private metaphoric
mode, forms, and organic shapes there lies a world hidden or buried in darkness that
readers attempt to experience according to their own understanding.
Poetry restored to Dickinson what had been lost, located what had been
missing, and renewed what had been corroded. It was her lifeline to the world: "she
ate and drank the precious words," endowing them with a fresh life culled from her
private lexicon of symbols, signs, and totems.
Like the symbolists, Dickinson felt that a correspondence— subtle, forever
fluctuating, and unnameable—existed between spiritual ideations and empirical
reality. To use everyday terminology in her poetry, but in a new way, as had Arthur
Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, and Stephane Mallarme, was to inject new energy into
colloquialisms, thereby altering their meaning, impact, and resonance.
The Lightning is a yellow Fork From Tables in the sky By inadvertently fingers dropt The awful Cutlery (#1173)
Visual in every way, Dickinson's poems are verbal transliterations of the New
England portraiture and landscape paintings of her day, rigorous and outwardly
simple, without great consideration for perspective. As visual dramas ("A Bird came
down the Walk— / He did not know I saw," *328), they are as clear, concise, and
precise as the drawings of John James Audubon. Cut off from the fustian fineries of
her day, she saw mercilessly into nature's raw and rapacious world,
both menacing and enthralling, beauteous and ugly. Her concretization
of abstract concepts, the singling out of parts of the body to determine
states of mind, and her mathematical notions—the "static representation
of movement," to quote Marcel Duchamp's paradoxical description of
his painting Nude Descending a Staircase—actually liken her to the
twentieth-century Dadaists, Surrealists, Expressionists, and Abstract
Expressionists.
[12]Like the Dadaists and Surrealists, Dickinson uses words
according to her own unconventional understanding of them, without
embellishment. They stand solitary, like one of Giorgio De Chi-rico's
heads on a street, detached, uncentered, thrust there by some
happenstance; or like one of Dali's clocks, bent to fit the sides of a low
wall.
Reminiscent of the Expressionists and Abstract Expressionists,
Dickinson sometimes conveys her subjective feelings in violent
distortions rather than in ordered representations, thereby underscoring
the terror, pathos, and agony of the moment.
I felt a Cleaving in my Mind— As if my Brain had split— I tried to match it—Seam by Seam— But could not make them fit. (#937)
Like the work of Samuel Beckett, which cannot be categorized, so
Dickinson's word must be examined for its infinite implications, each
being a microcosm of the macrocosm.
Poetic creation, for Dickinson, was like the opening of doors and
windows onto an unknown and frequently monstrous world:
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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I've seen a Dying Eye Run round and round a Room (#547)
leading on through inner circular paths of memory, recollection, contradiction,
where nothing is fixed. "I dwell in Possibility," Dickinson wrote. Despite the fluidity of
her thought and sensations, the certainty of her course made of her inner world a
fortress "Impregnable of Eye." (#657) Secretly and privately, "How powerful the
Stimulus / Of an Hermetic Mind," she forged on. (#711)
A Word made Flesh. . . . A Word that breathes distinctly Has not the power to die. . . . (#1651)
psP
chapter 3. selected poems 1
l written in 1858
∗ 8888
There is a word
Which bears a sword
Can pierce an armed man --
It hurls its barbed syllables
And is mute again --
But where it fell
The saved will tell
On patriotic day,
Some epauletted Brother
Gave his breath away.
Wherever runs the breathless sun --
Wherever roams the day --
There is its noiseless onset --
There is its victory!
Behold the keenest marksman!
The most accomplished shot!
Time’s sublimest target
Is a soul "forgot!"
1 Few of Dickinson’s poems have titles. The numbers used here follow the reference edition of her works, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, 3 vols.; ed. T. Johnson, 1955, which contains 1775 poems, all of them numbered. The footnotes below were extracted from Mc Michael’s anthology. Writing years are presumed. [Note by Vera ]
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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∗ 49494949
I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!
Angels—twice descending
Reimbursed my store—
Burglar! Banker—Father!
I am poor once more!
l written in 1859
∗ 67676767
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory
As he defeated—dying—
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
∗ 125125125125
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstacy.
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years—
Bitter contested farthings—
And Coffers heaped with Tears!
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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∗ 130130130130
These are the days when Birds come back—
A very few—a Bird or two—
To take a backward look.
These are the days when skies resume
The old—old sophistries of June—
A blue and gold mistake.
Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee—
Almost the plausibility
Induces my belief.
Till ranks of seeds their witness bear—
And softly thro' the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.
Oh Sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze—
Permit a child to join.
Thy sacred emblems to partake—
Thy consecrated bread to take
And thine immortal wine!
l written in 1860
∗ 165165165165
A Wounded Deer—leaps highest-
I've heard the Hunter tell—
'Tis but the Ecstasy of death—
And then the Brake is still!
The Smitten Rock that gushes!
The trampled Steel that springs!
A Cheek is always redder
Just where the Hectic stings!
Mirth is the Mail of Anguish—
In which it Cautious Arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And "you're hurt" exclaim!
∗ 185185185185
"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see—
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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∗ 210210210210
The thought beneath so slight a film—
Is more distinctly seen—
As laces just reveal the surge—
Or Mists—the Appenine—
∗ 214214214214
I taste a liquor never brewed—
From Tankards scooped in Pearl—
Not all the Frankfort Berries2
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of Air—am I—
And Debauchee of Dew—
Reeling—thro endless summer days—
From inns of Molten Blue—
When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door—
When Butterflies—renounce their "drams"—
I shall but drink the more!
2 Grapes grown in the region of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and used in making a fine Rhine wine. Another version of this line reads, "Not all the Vats upon the Rhine."
Till Seraphs3 swing their snowy Hats—
And Saints—to windows run—
To see the little Tippler
From Manzanilla4 come!5
l written in 1861
∗ 216 216 216 216
Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.
Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadences, --
Ah, what sagacity perished here!
Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.
3 The highest ranking of the nine orders of angels 4 A sherry wine exported from Manzanilla, Spain. 5 Two other versions of the final line exist: "Come staggering toward the sun." "Leaning against the—-sun—"
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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∗ 280 280 280 280
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading -- treading -- till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through --
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum --
Kept beating -- beating -- till I thought
My Mind was going numb --
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space -- began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here --
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down --
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing -- then --
∗ 287 287 287 287
A Clock stopped --
Not the Mantel’s --
Geneva’s farthest skill
Can’t put the puppet bowing --
That just now dangled still --
An awe came on the Trinket!
The Figures hunched, with pain --
Then quivered out of Decimals --
Into Degreeless Noon --
It will not stir for Doctors --
This Pendulum of snow --
This Shopman importunes it --
While cool -- concernless No --
Nods from the Gilded pointers --
Nods from the Seconds slim --
Decades of Arrogance between
The Dial life --
And Him --
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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l written in 1862
∗ 328 328 328 328
A Bird came down the Walk --
He did not know I saw --
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,
And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass --
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass --
He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around --
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought --
He stirred his Velvet Head
Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home --
Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam --
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.
∗ 338 338 338 338
I know that He exists.
Somewhere -- in Silence --
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.
‘Tis an instant’s play.
‘Tis 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!
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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∗ 375 375 375 375
The Angle of a Landscape --
That every time I wake --
Between my Curtain and the Wall
Upon an ample Crack --
Like a Venetian -- waiting --
Accosts my open eye --
Is just a Bough of Apples --
Held slanting, in the Sky --
The Pattern of a Chimney --
The Forehead of a Hill --
Sometimes -- a Vane’s Forefinger --
But that’s -- Occasional --
The Seasons -- shift -- my Picture --
Upon my Emerald Bough,
I wake -- to find no -- Emeralds --
Then -- Diamonds -- which the Snow
From Polar Caskets -- fetched me --
The Chimney -- and the Hill --
And just the Steeple’s finger --
These -- never stir at all --
∗ 414 414 414 414
‘Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch,
That nearer, every Day,
Kept narrowing its boiling Wheel
Until the Agony
Toyed coolly with the final inch
Of your delirious Hem --
And you dropt, lost,
When something broke --
And let you from a Dream --
As if a Goblin with a Gauge --
Kept measuring the Hours --
Until you felt your Second
Weigh, helpless, in his Paws --
And not a Sinew -- stirred -- could help,
And sense was setting numb --
When God -- remembered -- and the Fiend
Let go, then, Overcome --
As if your Sentence stood -- pronounced --
And you were frozen led
From Dungeon’s luxury of Doubt
To Gibbets, and the Dead --
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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And when the Film had stitched your eyes
A Creature gasped "Reprieve"!
Which Anguish was the utterest -- then --
To perish, or to live?
∗ 441 441 441 441
This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me --
The simple News that Nature told --
With tender Majesty
Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see --
For love of Her -- Sweet -- countrymen --
Judge tenderly -- of Me
∗ 520 520 520 520
I started Early -- Took my Dog --
And visited the Sea --
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me --
And Frigates -- in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands --
Presuming Me to be a Mouse --
Aground -- upon the Sands --
But no Man moved Me -- till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe --
And past my Apron -- and my Belt --
And past my Bodice -- too --
And made as He would eat me up --
As wholly as a Dew
Upon a Dandelion’s Sleeve --
And then -- I started -- too --
And He -- He followed -- close behind --
I felt his Silver Heel
Upon my Ankle -- Then my Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl --
Until We met the Solid Town --
No One He seemed to know --
And bowing -- with a Might look --
At me -- The Sea withdrew --
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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∗ 619 619 619 619
Glee -- The great storm is over --
Four -- have recovered the Land --
Forty -- gone down together --
Into the boiling Sand --
Ring -- for the Scant Salvation --
Toll -- for the bonnie Souls --
Neighbor -- and friend -- and Bridegroom --
Spinning upon the Shoals --
How they will tell the Story --
When Winter shake the Door --
Till the Children urge --
But the Forty --
Did they -- come back no more?
Then a softness -- suffuse the Story --
And a silence -- the Teller’s eye --
And the Children -- no further question --
And only the Sea -- reply --
l written in 1863
∗ 712 712 712 712
Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The Carriage held but just Ourselves --
And Immortality.
We slowly drove -- He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility --
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess -- in the Ring --
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain --
We passed the Setting Sun --
Or rather -- He passed Us --
The Dews drew quivering and chill --
For only Gossamer, my Gown --
My Tippet -- only Tulle --
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground --
The Roof was scarcely visible --
The Cornice -- in the Ground --
Since then -- ‘tis Centuries -- and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity --
∗ 747474742 2 2 2
Four Trees -- upon a solitary Acre --
Without Design
Or Order, or Apparent Action --
Maintain --
The Sun -- upon a Morning meets them --
The Wind --
No nearer Neighbor -- have they --
But God --
The Acre gives them -- Place --
They -- Him -- Attention of Passer by --
Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply --
Or Boy --
What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature --
What Plan
They severally -- retard -- or further --
Unknown --
l written in 1864
∗ 894 894 894 894
Of Consciousness, her awful Mate
The Soul cannot be rid --
As easy the secreting her
Behind the Eyes of God.
The deepest hid is sighted first
And scant to Him the Crowd --
What triple Lenses burn upon
The Escapade from God --
∗ 967 967 967 967
Pain -- expands the Time --
Ages coil within
The minute Circumference
Of a single Brain --
Pain contracts -- the Time --
Occupied with Shot
Gamuts of Eternities
Are as they were not --
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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l written in 1865
∗ 986 986 986 986
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides --
You may have met Him -- did you not
His notice sudden is --
The Grass divides as with a Comb --
A spotted shaft is seen --
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on --
He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn --
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot --
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone --
Several of Nature’s People
I know, and they know me --
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality --
But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone --
l written in 1866
∗ 1068 1068 1068 1068
Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.
No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.
Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify
Remit as yet no Grace
No Furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
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∗ 1100 1100 1100 1100
The last Night that She lived
It was a Common Night
Except the Dying -- this to Us
Made Nature different
We noticed smallest things --
Things overlooked before
By this great light upon our Minds
Italicized -- as ‘twere.
As We went out and in
Between Her final Room
And Rooms where Those to be alive
Tomorrow were, a Blame
That Others could exist
While She must finish quite
A Jealousy for Her arose
So nearly infinite --
We waited while She passed --
It was a narrow time --
Too jostled were Our Souls to speak
At length the notice came.
She mentioned, and forgot --
Then lightly as a Reed
Bent to the Water, struggled scarce --
Consented, and was dead --
And We -- We placed the Hair --
And drew the Head erect --
And then an awful leisure was
Belief to regulate --
l written in 1870
∗ 1173 1173 1173 1173
The Lightning is a yellow Fork
From Tables in the sky
By inadvertent fingers dropt
The awful Cutlery
Of mansions never quite disclosed
And never quite concealed
The Apparatus of the Dark
To ignorance revealed.
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
131
l written in 1872
∗ 1233 1233 1233 1233
Had I not seen the Sun
I could have borne the shade
But Light a newer Wilderness
My Wilderness has made --
l written in 1881
∗ 1518 1518 1518 1518
Not seeing, still we know --
Not knowing, guess --
Not guessing, smile and hide
And half caress --
And quake -- and turn away,
Seraphic fear --
Is Eden’s innuendo
"If you dare"?
l “date unknown”
∗ 1695 1695 1695 1695
There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself --
Finite infinity.
UNIT V – EMILY DICKINSON
132
cartoon available at
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