[
  {
    "title": "Success.",
    "body": "[Published in \"A Masque of Poets\"\nat the request of \"H.H.,\" the author's\nfellow-townswoman and friend.]\n\nSuccess is counted sweetest\nBy those who ne'er succeed.\nTo comprehend a nectar\nRequires sorest need.\n\nNot one of all the purple host\nWho took the flag to-day\nCan tell the definition,\nSo clear, of victory,\n\nAs he, defeated, dying,\nOn whose forbidden ear\nThe distant strains of triumph\nBreak, agonized and clear!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ii.",
    "body": "Our share of night to bear,\nOur share of morning,\nOur blank in bliss to fill,\nOur blank in scorning.\n\nHere a star, and there a star,\nSome lose their way.\nHere a mist, and there a mist,\nAfterwards -- day!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Rouge Et Noir.",
    "body": "Soul, wilt thou toss again?\nBy just such a hazard\nHundreds have lost, indeed,\nBut tens have won an all.\n\nAngels' breathless ballot\nLingers to record thee;\nImps in eager caucus\nRaffle for my soul.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Rouge Gagne.",
    "body": "'T is so much joy! 'T is so much joy!\nIf I should fail, what poverty!\nAnd yet, as poor as I\nHave ventured all upon a throw;\nHave gained! Yes! Hesitated so\nThis side the victory!\n\nLife is but life, and death but death!\nBliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!\nAnd if, indeed, I fail,\nAt least to know the worst is sweet.\nDefeat means nothing but defeat,\nNo drearier can prevail!\n\nAnd if I gain, -- oh, gun at sea,\nOh, bells that in the steeples be,\nAt first repeat it slow!\nFor heaven is a different thing\nConjectured, and waked sudden in,\nAnd might o'erwhelm me so!\n\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nGlee! The great storm is over!\nFour have recovered the land;\nForty gone down together\nInto the boiling sand.\n\nRing, for the scant salvation!\nToll, for the bonnie souls, --\nNeighbor and friend and bridegroom,\nSpinning upon the shoals!\n\nHow they will tell the shipwreck\nWhen winter shakes the door,\nTill the children ask, \"But the forty?\nDid they come back no more?\"\n\nThen a silence suffuses the story,\nAnd a softness the teller's eye;\nAnd the children no further question,\nAnd only the waves reply.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vi.",
    "body": "If I can stop one heart from breaking,\nI shall not live in vain;\nIf I can ease one life the aching,\nOr cool one pain,\nOr help one fainting robin\nUnto his nest again,\nI shall not live in vain.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Almost!",
    "body": "Within my reach!\nI could have touched!\nI might have chanced that way!\nSoft sauntered through the village,\nSauntered as soft away!\nSo unsuspected violets\nWithin the fields lie low,\nToo late for striving fingers\nThat passed, an hour ago.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Viii.",
    "body": "A wounded deer leaps highest,\nI've heard the hunter tell;\n'T is but the ecstasy of death,\nAnd then the brake is still.\n\nThe smitten rock that gushes,\nThe trampled steel that springs;\nA cheek is always redder\nJust where the hectic stings!\n\nMirth is the mail of anguish,\nIn which it cautions arm,\nLest anybody spy the blood\nAnd \"You're hurt\" exclaim!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ix.",
    "body": "The heart asks pleasure first,\nAnd then, excuse from pain;\nAnd then, those little anodynes\nThat deaden suffering;\n\nAnd then, to go to sleep;\nAnd then, if it should be\nThe will of its Inquisitor,\nThe liberty to die.\n\n\n\n\n\nX.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "In A Library.",
    "body": "A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is\nTo meet an antique book,\nIn just the dress his century wore;\nA privilege, I think,\n\nHis venerable hand to take,\nAnd warming in our own,\nA passage back, or two, to make\nTo times when he was young.\n\nHis quaint opinions to inspect,\nHis knowledge to unfold\nOn what concerns our mutual mind,\nThe literature of old;\n\nWhat interested scholars most,\nWhat competitions ran\nWhen Plato was a certainty.\nAnd Sophocles a man;\n\nWhen Sappho was a living girl,\nAnd Beatrice wore\nThe gown that Dante deified.\nFacts, centuries before,\n\nHe traverses familiar,\nAs one should come to town\nAnd tell you all your dreams were true;\nHe lived where dreams were sown.\n\nHis presence is enchantment,\nYou beg him not to go;\nOld volumes shake their vellum heads\nAnd tantalize, just so.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xi.",
    "body": "Much madness is divinest sense\nTo a discerning eye;\nMuch sense the starkest madness.\n'T is the majority\nIn this, as all, prevails.\nAssent, and you are sane;\nDemur, -- you're straightway dangerous,\nAnd handled with a chain.\nXII.\n\nI asked no other thing,\nNo other was denied.\nI offered Being for it;\nThe mighty merchant smiled.\n\nBrazil? He twirled a button,\nWithout a glance my way:\n\"But, madam, is there nothing else\nThat we can show to-day?\"",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Exclusion.",
    "body": "The soul selects her own society,\nThen shuts the door;\nOn her divine majority\nObtrude no more.\n\nUnmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing\nAt her low gate;\nUnmoved, an emperor is kneeling\nUpon her mat.\n\nI've known her from an ample nation\nChoose one;\nThen close the valves of her attention\nLike stone.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Secret.",
    "body": "Some things that fly there be, --\nBirds, hours, the bumble-bee:\nOf these no elegy.\n\nSome things that stay there be, --\nGrief, hills, eternity:\nNor this behooveth me.\n\nThere are, that resting, rise.\nCan I expound the skies?\nHow still the riddle lies!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Lonely House.",
    "body": "I know some lonely houses off the road\nA robber 'd like the look of, --\nWooden barred,\nAnd windows hanging low,\nInviting to\nA portico,\nWhere two could creep:\nOne hand the tools,\nThe other peep\nTo make sure all's asleep.\nOld-fashioned eyes,\nNot easy to surprise!\n\nHow orderly the kitchen 'd look by night,\nWith just a clock, --\nBut they could gag the tick,\nAnd mice won't bark;\nAnd so the walls don't tell,\nNone will.\n\nA pair of spectacles ajar just stir --\nAn almanac's aware.\nWas it the mat winked,\nOr a nervous star?\nThe moon slides down the stair\nTo see who's there.\n\nThere's plunder, -- where?\nTankard, or spoon,\nEarring, or stone,\nA watch, some ancient brooch\nTo match the grandmamma,\nStaid sleeping there.\n\nDay rattles, too,\nStealth's slow;\nThe sun has got as far\nAs the third sycamore.\nScreams chanticleer,\n\"Who's there?\"\nAnd echoes, trains away,\nSneer -- \"Where?\"\nWhile the old couple, just astir,\nFancy the sunrise left the door ajar!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvi.",
    "body": "To fight aloud is very brave,\nBut gallanter, I know,\nWho charge within the bosom,\nThe cavalry of woe.\n\nWho win, and nations do not see,\nWho fall, and none observe,\nWhose dying eyes no country\nRegards with patriot love.\n\nWe trust, in plumed procession,\nFor such the angels go,\nRank after rank, with even feet\nAnd uniforms of snow.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dawn.",
    "body": "When night is almost done,\nAnd sunrise grows so near\nThat we can touch the spaces,\nIt 's time to smooth the hair\n\nAnd get the dimples ready,\nAnd wonder we could care\nFor that old faded midnight\nThat frightened but an hour.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Book Of Martyrs.",
    "body": "Read, sweet, how others strove,\nTill we are stouter;\nWhat they renounced,\nTill we are less afraid;\nHow many times they bore\nThe faithful witness,\nTill we are helped,\nAs if a kingdom cared!\n\nRead then of faith\nThat shone above the fagot;\nClear strains of hymn\nThe river could not drown;\nBrave names of men\nAnd celestial women,\nPassed out of record\nInto renown!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Mystery Of Pain.",
    "body": "Pain has an element of blank;\nIt cannot recollect\nWhen it began, or if there were\nA day when it was not.\n\nIt has no future but itself,\nIts infinite realms contain\nIts past, enlightened to perceive\nNew periods of pain.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xx.",
    "body": "I taste a liquor never brewed,\nFrom tankards scooped in pearl;\nNot all the vats upon the Rhine\nYield such an alcohol!\n\nInebriate of air am I,\nAnd debauchee of dew,\nReeling, through endless summer days,\nFrom inns of molten blue.\n\nWhen landlords turn the drunken bee\nOut of the foxglove's door,\nWhen butterflies renounce their drams,\nI shall but drink the more!\n\nTill seraphs swing their snowy hats,\nAnd saints to windows run,\nTo see the little tippler\nLeaning against the sun!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Book.",
    "body": "He ate and drank the precious words,\nHis spirit grew robust;\nHe knew no more that he was poor,\nNor that his frame was dust.\nHe danced along the dingy days,\nAnd this bequest of wings\nWas but a book. What liberty\nA loosened spirit brings!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxii.",
    "body": "I had no time to hate, because\nThe grave would hinder me,\nAnd life was not so ample I\nCould finish enmity.\n\nNor had I time to love; but since\nSome industry must be,\nThe little toil of love, I thought,\nWas large enough for me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Unreturning.",
    "body": "'T was such a little, little boat\nThat toddled down the bay!\n'T was such a gallant, gallant sea\nThat beckoned it away!\n\n'T was such a greedy, greedy wave\nThat licked it from the coast;\nNor ever guessed the stately sails\nMy little craft was lost!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxiv.",
    "body": "Whether my bark went down at sea,\nWhether she met with gales,\nWhether to isles enchanted\nShe bent her docile sails;\n\nBy what mystic mooring\nShe is held to-day, --\nThis is the errand of the eye\nOut upon the bay.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxv.",
    "body": "Belshazzar had a letter, --\nHe never had but one;\nBelshazzar's correspondent\nConcluded and begun\nIn that immortal copy\nThe conscience of us all\nCan read without its glasses\nOn revelation's wall.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxvi.",
    "body": "The brain within its groove\nRuns evenly and true;\nBut let a splinter swerve,\n'T were easier for you\nTo put the water back\nWhen floods have slit the hills,\nAnd scooped a turnpike for themselves,\nAnd blotted out the mills!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mine.",
    "body": "Mine by the right of the white election!\nMine by the royal seal!\nMine by the sign in the scarlet prison\nBars cannot conceal!\n\nMine, here in vision and in veto!\nMine, by the grave's repeal\nTitled, confirmed, -- delirious charter!\nMine, while the ages steal!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Bequest.",
    "body": "You left me, sweet, two legacies, --\nA legacy of love\nA Heavenly Father would content,\nHad He the offer of;\n\nYou left me boundaries of pain\nCapacious as the sea,\nBetween eternity and time,\nYour consciousness and me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "Alter? When the hills do.\nFalter? When the sun\nQuestion if his glory\nBe the perfect one.\n\nSurfeit? When the daffodil\nDoth of the dew:\nEven as herself, O friend!\nI will of you!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Suspense.",
    "body": "Elysium is as far as to\nThe very nearest room,\nIf in that room a friend await\nFelicity or doom.\n\nWhat fortitude the soul contains,\nThat it can so endure\nThe accent of a coming foot,\nThe opening of a door!\n\n\n\n\n\nV.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Surrender.",
    "body": "Doubt me, my dim companion!\nWhy, God would be content\nWith but a fraction of the love\nPoured thee without a stint.\nThe whole of me, forever,\nWhat more the woman can, --\nSay quick, that I may dower thee\nWith last delight I own!\n\nIt cannot be my spirit,\nFor that was thine before;\nI ceded all of dust I knew, --\nWhat opulence the more\nHad I, a humble maiden,\nWhose farthest of degree\nWas that she might,\nSome distant heaven,\nDwell timidly with thee!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vi.",
    "body": "If you were coming in the fall,\nI'd brush the summer by\nWith half a smile and half a spurn,\nAs housewives do a fly.\n\nIf I could see you in a year,\nI'd wind the months in balls,\nAnd put them each in separate drawers,\nUntil their time befalls.\n\nIf only centuries delayed,\nI'd count them on my hand,\nSubtracting till my fingers dropped\nInto Van Diemen's land.\n\nIf certain, when this life was out,\nThat yours and mine should be,\nI'd toss it yonder like a rind,\nAnd taste eternity.\n\nBut now, all ignorant of the length\nOf time's uncertain wing,\nIt goads me, like the goblin bee,\nThat will not state its sting.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "With A Flower.",
    "body": "I hide myself within my flower,\nThat wearing on your breast,\nYou, unsuspecting, wear me too --\nAnd angels know the rest.\n\nI hide myself within my flower,\nThat, fading from your vase,\nYou, unsuspecting, feel for me\nAlmost a loneliness.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Proof.",
    "body": "That I did always love,\nI bring thee proof:\nThat till I loved\nI did not love enough.\n\nThat I shall love alway,\nI offer thee\nThat love is life,\nAnd life hath immortality.\n\nThis, dost thou doubt, sweet?\nThen have I\nNothing to show\nBut Calvary.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ix.",
    "body": "Have you got a brook in your little heart,\nWhere bashful flowers blow,\nAnd blushing birds go down to drink,\nAnd shadows tremble so?\n\nAnd nobody knows, so still it flows,\nThat any brook is there;\nAnd yet your little draught of life\nIs daily drunken there.\n\nThen look out for the little brook in March,\nWhen the rivers overflow,\nAnd the snows come hurrying from the hills,\nAnd the bridges often go.\n\nAnd later, in August it may be,\nWhen the meadows parching lie,\nBeware, lest this little brook of life\nSome burning noon go dry!\n\n\n\n\n\nX.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Transplanted.",
    "body": "As if some little Arctic flower,\nUpon the polar hem,\nWent wandering down the latitudes,\nUntil it puzzled came\nTo continents of summer,\nTo firmaments of sun,\nTo strange, bright crowds of flowers,\nAnd birds of foreign tongue!\nI say, as if this little flower\nTo Eden wandered in --\nWhat then? Why, nothing, only,\nYour inference therefrom!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Outlet.",
    "body": "My river runs to thee:\nBlue sea, wilt welcome me?\n\nMy river waits reply.\nOh sea, look graciously!\n\nI'll fetch thee brooks\nFrom spotted nooks, --\n\nSay, sea,\nTake me!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "In Vain.",
    "body": "I cannot live with you,\nIt would be life,\nAnd life is over there\nBehind the shelf\n\nThe sexton keeps the key to,\nPutting up\nOur life, his porcelain,\nLike a cup\n\nDiscarded of the housewife,\nQuaint or broken;\nA newer Sevres pleases,\nOld ones crack.\n\nI could not die with you,\nFor one must wait\nTo shut the other's gaze down, --\nYou could not.\n\nAnd I, could I stand by\nAnd see you freeze,\nWithout my right of frost,\nDeath's privilege?\n\nNor could I rise with you,\nBecause your face\nWould put out Jesus',\nThat new grace\n\nGlow plain and foreign\nOn my homesick eye,\nExcept that you, than he\nShone closer by.\n\nThey'd judge us -- how?\nFor you served Heaven, you know,\nOr sought to;\nI could not,\n\nBecause you saturated sight,\nAnd I had no more eyes\nFor sordid excellence\nAs Paradise.\n\nAnd were you lost, I would be,\nThough my name\nRang loudest\nOn the heavenly fame.\n\nAnd were you saved,\nAnd I condemned to be\nWhere you were not,\nThat self were hell to me.\n\nSo we must keep apart,\nYou there, I here,\nWith just the door ajar\nThat oceans are,\nAnd prayer,\nAnd that pale sustenance,\nDespair!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Renunciation.",
    "body": "There came a day at summer's full\nEntirely for me;\nI thought that such were for the saints,\nWhere revelations be.\n\nThe sun, as common, went abroad,\nThe flowers, accustomed, blew,\nAs if no soul the solstice passed\nThat maketh all things new.\n\nThe time was scarce profaned by speech;\nThe symbol of a word\nWas needless, as at sacrament\nThe wardrobe of our Lord.\n\nEach was to each the sealed church,\nPermitted to commune this time,\nLest we too awkward show\nAt supper of the Lamb.\n\nThe hours slid fast, as hours will,\nClutched tight by greedy hands;\nSo faces on two decks look back,\nBound to opposing lands.\n\nAnd so, when all the time had failed,\nWithout external sound,\nEach bound the other's crucifix,\nWe gave no other bond.\n\nSufficient troth that we shall rise --\nDeposed, at length, the grave --\nTo that new marriage, justified\nThrough Calvaries of Love!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Love'S Baptism.",
    "body": "I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs;\nThe name they dropped upon my face\nWith water, in the country church,\nIs finished using now,\nAnd they can put it with my dolls,\nMy childhood, and the string of spools\nI've finished threading too.\n\nBaptized before without the choice,\nBut this time consciously, of grace\nUnto supremest name,\nCalled to my full, the crescent dropped,\nExistence's whole arc filled up\nWith one small diadem.\n\nMy second rank, too small the first,\nCrowned, crowing on my father's breast,\nA half unconscious queen;\nBut this time, adequate, erect,\nWith will to choose or to reject.\nAnd I choose -- just a throne.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Resurrection.",
    "body": "'T was a long parting, but the time\nFor interview had come;\nBefore the judgment-seat of God,\nThe last and second time\n\nThese fleshless lovers met,\nA heaven in a gaze,\nA heaven of heavens, the privilege\nOf one another's eyes.\n\nNo lifetime set on them,\nApparelled as the new\nUnborn, except they had beheld,\nBorn everlasting now.\n\nWas bridal e'er like this?\nA paradise, the host,\nAnd cherubim and seraphim\nThe most familiar guest.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Apocalypse.",
    "body": "I'm wife; I've finished that,\nThat other state;\nI'm Czar, I'm woman now:\nIt's safer so.\n\nHow odd the girl's life looks\nBehind this soft eclipse!\nI think that earth seems so\nTo those in heaven now.\n\nThis being comfort, then\nThat other kind was pain;\nBut why compare?\nI'm wife! stop there!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Wife.",
    "body": "She rose to his requirement, dropped\nThe playthings of her life\nTo take the honorable work\nOf woman and of wife.\n\nIf aught she missed in her new day\nOf amplitude, or awe,\nOr first prospective, or the gold\nIn using wore away,\n\nIt lay unmentioned, as the sea\nDevelops pearl and weed,\nBut only to himself is known\nThe fathoms they abide.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Apotheosis.",
    "body": "Come slowly, Eden!\nLips unused to thee,\nBashful, sip thy jasmines,\nAs the fainting bee,\n\nReaching late his flower,\nRound her chamber hums,\nCounts his nectars -- enters,\nAnd is lost in balms!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "May-Flower.",
    "body": "Pink, small, and punctual,\nAromatic, low,\nCovert in April,\nCandid in May,\n\nDear to the moss,\nKnown by the knoll,\nNext to the robin\nIn every human soul.\n\nBold little beauty,\nBedecked with thee,\nNature forswears\nAntiquity.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Why?",
    "body": "The murmur of a bee\nA witchcraft yieldeth me.\nIf any ask me why,\n'T were easier to die\nThan tell.\n\nThe red upon the hill\nTaketh away my will;\nIf anybody sneer,\nTake care, for God is here,\nThat's all.\n\nThe breaking of the day\nAddeth to my degree;\nIf any ask me how,\nArtist, who drew me so,\nMust tell!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iv.",
    "body": "Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower?\nBut I could never sell.\nIf you would like to borrow\nUntil the daffodil\n\nUnties her yellow bonnet\nBeneath the village door,\nUntil the bees, from clover rows\nTheir hock and sherry draw,\n\nWhy, I will lend until just then,\nBut not an hour more!\n\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nThe pedigree of honey\nDoes not concern the bee;\nA clover, any time, to him\nIs aristocracy.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Service Of Song.",
    "body": "Some keep the Sabbath going to church;\nI keep it staying at home,\nWith a bobolink for a chorister,\nAnd an orchard for a dome.\n\nSome keep the Sabbath in surplice;\nI just wear my wings,\nAnd instead of tolling the bell for church,\nOur little sexton sings.\n\nGod preaches, -- a noted clergyman, --\nAnd the sermon is never long;\nSo instead of getting to heaven at last,\nI'm going all along!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vii.",
    "body": "The bee is not afraid of me,\nI know the butterfly;\nThe pretty people in the woods\nReceive me cordially.\n\nThe brooks laugh louder when I come,\nThe breezes madder play.\nWherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists?\nWherefore, O summer's day?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Summer'S Armies.",
    "body": "Some rainbow coming from the fair!\nSome vision of the world Cashmere\nI confidently see!\nOr else a peacock's purple train,\nFeather by feather, on the plain\nFritters itself away!\n\nThe dreamy butterflies bestir,\nLethargic pools resume the whir\nOf last year's sundered tune.\nFrom some old fortress on the sun\nBaronial bees march, one by one,\nIn murmuring platoon!\n\nThe robins stand as thick to-day\nAs flakes of snow stood yesterday,\nOn fence and roof and twig.\nThe orchis binds her feather on\nFor her old lover, Don the Sun,\nRevisiting the bog!\n\nWithout commander, countless, still,\nThe regiment of wood and hill\nIn bright detachment stand.\nBehold! Whose multitudes are these?\nThe children of whose turbaned seas,\nOr what Circassian land?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Grass.",
    "body": "The grass so little has to do, --\nA sphere of simple green,\nWith only butterflies to brood,\nAnd bees to entertain,\n\nAnd stir all day to pretty tunes\nThe breezes fetch along,\nAnd hold the sunshine in its lap\nAnd bow to everything;\n\nAnd thread the dews all night, like pearls,\nAnd make itself so fine, --\nA duchess were too common\nFor such a noticing.\n\nAnd even when it dies, to pass\nIn odors so divine,\nAs lowly spices gone to sleep,\nOr amulets of pine.\n\nAnd then to dwell in sovereign barns,\nAnd dream the days away, --\nThe grass so little has to do,\nI wish I were the hay!\n\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\nA little road not made of man,\nEnabled of the eye,\nAccessible to thill of bee,\nOr cart of butterfly.\n\nIf town it have, beyond itself,\n'T is that I cannot say;\nI only sigh, -- no vehicle\nBears me along that way.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Summer Shower.",
    "body": "A drop fell on the apple tree,\nAnother on the roof;\nA half a dozen kissed the eaves,\nAnd made the gables laugh.\n\nA few went out to help the brook,\nThat went to help the sea.\nMyself conjectured, Were they pearls,\nWhat necklaces could be!\n\nThe dust replaced in hoisted roads,\nThe birds jocoser sung;\nThe sunshine threw his hat away,\nThe orchards spangles hung.\n\nThe breezes brought dejected lutes,\nAnd bathed them in the glee;\nThe East put out a single flag,\nAnd signed the fete away.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Psalm Of The Day.",
    "body": "A something in a summer's day,\nAs slow her flambeaux burn away,\nWhich solemnizes me.\n\nA something in a summer's noon, --\nAn azure depth, a wordless tune,\nTranscending ecstasy.\n\nAnd still within a summer's night\nA something so transporting bright,\nI clap my hands to see;\n\nThen veil my too inspecting face,\nLest such a subtle, shimmering grace\nFlutter too far for me.\n\nThe wizard-fingers never rest,\nThe purple brook within the breast\nStill chafes its narrow bed;\n\nStill rears the East her amber flag,\nGuides still the sun along the crag\nHis caravan of red,\n\nLike flowers that heard the tale of dews,\nBut never deemed the dripping prize\nAwaited their low brows;\n\nOr bees, that thought the summer's name\nSome rumor of delirium\nNo summer could for them;\n\nOr Arctic creature, dimly stirred\nBy tropic hint, -- some travelled bird\nImported to the wood;\n\nOr wind's bright signal to the ear,\nMaking that homely and severe,\nContented, known, before\n\nThe heaven unexpected came,\nTo lives that thought their worshipping\nA too presumptuous psalm.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Sea Of Sunset.",
    "body": "This is the land the sunset washes,\nThese are the banks of the Yellow Sea;\nWhere it rose, or whither it rushes,\nThese are the western mystery!\n\nNight after night her purple traffic\nStrews the landing with opal bales;\nMerchantmen poise upon horizons,\nDip, and vanish with fairy sails.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Purple Clover.",
    "body": "There is a flower that bees prefer,\nAnd butterflies desire;\nTo gain the purple democrat\nThe humming-birds aspire.\n\nAnd whatsoever insect pass,\nA honey bears away\nProportioned to his several dearth\nAnd her capacity.\n\nHer face is rounder than the moon,\nAnd ruddier than the gown\nOf orchis in the pasture,\nOr rhododendron worn.\n\nShe doth not wait for June;\nBefore the world is green\nHer sturdy little countenance\nAgainst the wind is seen,\n\nContending with the grass,\nNear kinsman to herself,\nFor privilege of sod and sun,\nSweet litigants for life.\n\nAnd when the hills are full,\nAnd newer fashions blow,\nDoth not retract a single spice\nFor pang of jealousy.\n\nHer public is the noon,\nHer providence the sun,\nHer progress by the bee proclaimed\nIn sovereign, swerveless tune.\n\nThe bravest of the host,\nSurrendering the last,\nNor even of defeat aware\nWhen cancelled by the frost.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Bee.",
    "body": "Like trains of cars on tracks of plush\nI hear the level bee:\nA jar across the flowers goes,\nTheir velvet masonry\n\nWithstands until the sweet assault\nTheir chivalry consumes,\nWhile he, victorious, tilts away\nTo vanquish other blooms.\n\nHis feet are shod with gauze,\nHis helmet is of gold;\nHis breast, a single onyx\nWith chrysoprase, inlaid.\n\nHis labor is a chant,\nHis idleness a tune;\nOh, for a bee's experience\nOf clovers and of noon!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvi.",
    "body": "Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn\nIndicative that suns go down;\nThe notice to the startled grass\nThat darkness is about to pass.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvii.",
    "body": "As children bid the guest good-night,\nAnd then reluctant turn,\nMy flowers raise their pretty lips,\nThen put their nightgowns on.\n\nAs children caper when they wake,\nMerry that it is morn,\nMy flowers from a hundred cribs\nWill peep, and prance again.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xviii.",
    "body": "Angels in the early morning\nMay be seen the dews among,\nStooping, plucking, smiling, flying:\nDo the buds to them belong?\n\nAngels when the sun is hottest\nMay be seen the sands among,\nStooping, plucking, sighing, flying;\nParched the flowers they bear along.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xix.",
    "body": "So bashful when I spied her,\nSo pretty, so ashamed!\nSo hidden in her leaflets,\nLest anybody find;\n\nSo breathless till I passed her,\nSo helpless when I turned\nAnd bore her, struggling, blushing,\nHer simple haunts beyond!\n\nFor whom I robbed the dingle,\nFor whom betrayed the dell,\nMany will doubtless ask me,\nBut I shall never tell!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Two Worlds.",
    "body": "It makes no difference abroad,\nThe seasons fit the same,\nThe mornings blossom into noons,\nAnd split their pods of flame.\n\nWild-flowers kindle in the woods,\nThe brooks brag all the day;\nNo blackbird bates his jargoning\nFor passing Calvary.\n\nAuto-da-fe and judgment\nAre nothing to the bee;\nHis separation from his rose\nTo him seems misery.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Mountain.",
    "body": "The mountain sat upon the plain\nIn his eternal chair,\nHis observation omnifold,\nHis inquest everywhere.\n\nThe seasons prayed around his knees,\nLike children round a sire:\nGrandfather of the days is he,\nOf dawn the ancestor.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Day.",
    "body": "I'll tell you how the sun rose, --\nA ribbon at a time.\nThe steeples swam in amethyst,\nThe news like squirrels ran.\n\nThe hills untied their bonnets,\nThe bobolinks begun.\nThen I said softly to myself,\n\"That must have been the sun!\"\n\n        *  *  *\n\nBut how he set, I know not.\nThere seemed a purple stile\nWhich little yellow boys and girls\nWere climbing all the while\n\nTill when they reached the other side,\nA dominie in gray\nPut gently up the evening bars,\nAnd led the flock away.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxiii.",
    "body": "The butterfly's assumption-gown,\nIn chrysoprase apartments hung,\n  This afternoon put on.\n\nHow condescending to descend,\nAnd be of buttercups the friend\n  In a New England town!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Wind.",
    "body": "Of all the sounds despatched abroad,\nThere's not a charge to me\nLike that old measure in the boughs,\nThat phraseless melody\n\nThe wind does, working like a hand\nWhose fingers brush the sky,\nThen quiver down, with tufts of tune\nPermitted gods and me.\n\nWhen winds go round and round in bands,\nAnd thrum upon the door,\nAnd birds take places overhead,\nTo bear them orchestra,\n\nI crave him grace, of summer boughs,\nIf such an outcast be,\nHe never heard that fleshless chant\nRise solemn in the tree,\n\nAs if some caravan of sound\nOn deserts, in the sky,\nHad broken rank,\nThen knit, and passed\nIn seamless company.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Death And Life.",
    "body": "Apparently with no surprise\nTo any happy flower,\nThe frost beheads it at its play\nIn accidental power.\nThe blond assassin passes on,\nThe sun proceeds unmoved\nTo measure off another day\nFor an approving God.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxvi.",
    "body": "'T WAS later when the summer went\nThan when the cricket came,\nAnd yet we knew that gentle clock\nMeant nought but going home.\n\n'T was sooner when the cricket went\nThan when the winter came,\nYet that pathetic pendulum\nKeeps esoteric time.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Indian Summer.",
    "body": "These are the days when birds come back,\nA very few, a bird or two,\nTo take a backward look.\n\nThese are the days when skies put on\nThe old, old sophistries of June, --\nA blue and gold mistake.\n\nOh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,\nAlmost thy plausibility\nInduces my belief,\n\nTill ranks of seeds their witness bear,\nAnd softly through the altered air\nHurries a timid leaf!\n\nOh, sacrament of summer days,\nOh, last communion in the haze,\nPermit a child to join,\n\nThy sacred emblems to partake,\nThy consecrated bread to break,\nTaste thine immortal wine!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Autumn.",
    "body": "The morns are meeker than they were,\nThe nuts are getting brown;\nThe berry's cheek is plumper,\nThe rose is out of town.\n\nThe maple wears a gayer scarf,\nThe field a scarlet gown.\nLest I should be old-fashioned,\nI'll put a trinket on.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beclouded.",
    "body": "The sky is low, the clouds are mean,\nA travelling flake of snow\nAcross a barn or through a rut\nDebates if it will go.\n\nA narrow wind complains all day\nHow some one treated him;\nNature, like us, is sometimes caught\nWithout her diadem.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Hemlock.",
    "body": "I think the hemlock likes to stand\nUpon a marge of snow;\nIt suits his own austerity,\nAnd satisfies an awe\n\nThat men must slake in wilderness,\nOr in the desert cloy, --\nAn instinct for the hoar, the bald,\nLapland's necessity.\n\nThe hemlock's nature thrives on cold;\nThe gnash of northern winds\nIs sweetest nutriment to him,\nHis best Norwegian wines.\n\nTo satin races he is nought;\nBut children on the Don\nBeneath his tabernacles play,\nAnd Dnieper wrestlers run.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxi.",
    "body": "There's a certain slant of light,\nOn winter afternoons,\nThat oppresses, like the weight\nOf cathedral tunes.\n\nHeavenly hurt it gives us;\nWe can find no scar,\nBut internal difference\nWhere the meanings are.\n\nNone may teach it anything,\n'T is the seal, despair, --\nAn imperial affliction\nSent us of the air.\n\nWhen it comes, the landscape listens,\nShadows hold their breath;\nWhen it goes, 't is like the distance\nOn the look of death.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iv. Time And Eternity.",
    "body": "I.\n\nOne dignity delays for all,\nOne mitred afternoon.\nNone can avoid this purple,\nNone evade this crown.\n\nCoach it insures, and footmen,\nChamber and state and throng;\nBells, also, in the village,\nAs we ride grand along.\n\nWhat dignified attendants,\nWhat service when we pause!\nHow loyally at parting\nTheir hundred hats they raise!\n\nHow pomp surpassing ermine,\nWhen simple you and I\nPresent our meek escutcheon,\nAnd claim the rank to die!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Too Late.",
    "body": "Delayed till she had ceased to know,\nDelayed till in its vest of snow\n   Her loving bosom lay.\nAn hour behind the fleeting breath,\nLater by just an hour than death, --\n   Oh, lagging yesterday!\n\nCould she have guessed that it would be;\nCould but a crier of the glee\n   Have climbed the distant hill;\nHad not the bliss so slow a pace, --\nWho knows but this surrendered face\n   Were undefeated still?\n\nOh, if there may departing be\nAny forgot by victory\n   In her imperial round,\nShow them this meek apparelled thing,\nThat could not stop to be a king,\n   Doubtful if it be crowned!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Astra Castra.",
    "body": "Departed to the judgment,\nA mighty afternoon;\nGreat clouds like ushers leaning,\nCreation looking on.\n\nThe flesh surrendered, cancelled,\nThe bodiless begun;\nTwo worlds, like audiences, disperse\nAnd leave the soul alone.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iv.",
    "body": "Safe in their alabaster chambers,\nUntouched by morning and untouched by noon,\nSleep the meek members of the resurrection,\nRafter of satin, and roof of stone.\n\nLight laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;\nBabbles the bee in a stolid ear;\nPipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, --\nAh, what sagacity perished here!\n\nGrand go the years in the crescent above them;\nWorlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,\nDiadems drop and Doges surrender,\nSoundless as dots on a disk of snow.\n\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nOn this long storm the rainbow rose,\nOn this late morn the sun;\nThe clouds, like listless elephants,\nHorizons straggled down.\n\nThe birds rose smiling in their nests,\nThe gales indeed were done;\nAlas! how heedless were the eyes\nOn whom the summer shone!\n\nThe quiet nonchalance of death\nNo daybreak can bestir;\nThe slow archangel's syllables\nMust awaken her.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "From The Chrysalis.",
    "body": "My cocoon tightens, colors tease,\nI'm feeling for the air;\nA dim capacity for wings\nDegrades the dress I wear.\n\nA power of butterfly must be\nThe aptitude to fly,\nMeadows of majesty concedes\nAnd easy sweeps of sky.\n\nSo I must baffle at the hint\nAnd cipher at the sign,\nAnd make much blunder, if at last\nI take the clew divine.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Setting Sail.",
    "body": "Exultation is the going\nOf an inland soul to sea, --\nPast the houses, past the headlands,\nInto deep eternity!\n\nBred as we, among the mountains,\nCan the sailor understand\nThe divine intoxication\nOf the first league out from land?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Viii.",
    "body": "Look back on time with kindly eyes,\nHe doubtless did his best;\nHow softly sinks his trembling sun\nIn human nature's west!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ix.",
    "body": "A train went through a burial gate,\nA bird broke forth and sang,\nAnd trilled, and quivered, and shook his throat\nTill all the churchyard rang;\n\nAnd then adjusted his little notes,\nAnd bowed and sang again.\nDoubtless, he thought it meet of him\nTo say good-by to men.\n\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\nI died for beauty, but was scarce\nAdjusted in the tomb,\nWhen one who died for truth was lain\nIn an adjoining room.\n\nHe questioned softly why I failed?\n\"For beauty,\" I replied.\n\"And I for truth, -- the two are one;\nWe brethren are,\" he said.\n\nAnd so, as kinsmen met a night,\nWe talked between the rooms,\nUntil the moss had reached our lips,\nAnd covered up our names.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "\"Troubled About Many Things.\"",
    "body": "How many times these low feet staggered,\nOnly the soldered mouth can tell;\nTry! can you stir the awful rivet?\nTry! can you lift the hasps of steel?\n\nStroke the cool forehead, hot so often,\nLift, if you can, the listless hair;\nHandle the adamantine fingers\nNever a thimble more shall wear.\n\nBuzz the dull flies on the chamber window;\nBrave shines the sun through the freckled pane;\nFearless the cobweb swings from the ceiling --\nIndolent housewife, in daisies lain!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Real.",
    "body": "I like a look of agony,\nBecause I know it 's true;\nMen do not sham convulsion,\nNor simulate a throe.\n\nThe eyes glaze once, and that is death.\nImpossible to feign\nThe beads upon the forehead\nBy homely anguish strung.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Funeral.",
    "body": "That short, potential stir\nThat each can make but once,\nThat bustle so illustrious\n'T is almost consequence,\n\nIs the eclat of death.\nOh, thou unknown renown\nThat not a beggar would accept,\nHad he the power to spurn!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xiv.",
    "body": "I went to thank her,\nBut she slept;\nHer bed a funnelled stone,\nWith nosegays at the head and foot,\nThat travellers had thrown,\n\nWho went to thank her;\nBut she slept.\n'T was short to cross the sea\nTo look upon her like, alive,\nBut turning back 't was slow.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xv.",
    "body": "I've seen a dying eye\nRun round and round a room\nIn search of something, as it seemed,\nThen cloudier become;\nAnd then, obscure with fog,\nAnd then be soldered down,\nWithout disclosing what it be,\n'T were blessed to have seen.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Refuge.",
    "body": "The clouds their backs together laid,\nThe north begun to push,\nThe forests galloped till they fell,\nThe lightning skipped like mice;\nThe thunder crumbled like a stuff --\nHow good to be safe in tombs,\nWhere nature's temper cannot reach,\nNor vengeance ever comes!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvii.",
    "body": "I never saw a moor,\nI never saw the sea;\nYet know I how the heather looks,\nAnd what a wave must be.\n\nI never spoke with God,\nNor visited in heaven;\nYet certain am I of the spot\nAs if the chart were given.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Playmates.",
    "body": "God permits industrious angels\nAfternoons to play.\nI met one, -- forgot my school-mates,\nAll, for him, straightway.\n\nGod calls home the angels promptly\nAt the setting sun;\nI missed mine. How dreary marbles,\nAfter playing Crown!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xix.",
    "body": "To know just how he suffered would be dear;\nTo know if any human eyes were near\nTo whom he could intrust his wavering gaze,\nUntil it settled firm on Paradise.\n\nTo know if he was patient, part content,\nWas dying as he thought, or different;\nWas it a pleasant day to die,\nAnd did the sunshine face his way?\n\nWhat was his furthest mind, of home, or God,\nOr what the distant say\nAt news that he ceased human nature\nOn such a day?\n\nAnd wishes, had he any?\nJust his sigh, accented,\nHad been legible to me.\nAnd was he confident until\nIll fluttered out in everlasting well?\n\nAnd if he spoke, what name was best,\nWhat first,\nWhat one broke off with\nAt the drowsiest?\n\nWas he afraid, or tranquil?\nMight he know\nHow conscious consciousness could grow,\nTill love that was, and love too blest to be,\nMeet -- and the junction be Eternity?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xx.",
    "body": "The last night that she lived,\nIt was a common night,\nExcept the dying; this to us\nMade nature different.\n\nWe noticed smallest things, --\nThings overlooked before,\nBy this great light upon our minds\nItalicized, as 't were.\n\nThat others could exist\nWhile she must finish quite,\nA jealousy for her arose\nSo nearly infinite.\n\nWe waited while she passed;\nIt was a narrow time,\nToo jostled were our souls to speak,\nAt length the notice came.\n\nShe mentioned, and forgot;\nThen lightly as a reed\nBent to the water, shivered scarce,\nConsented, and was dead.\n\nAnd we, we placed the hair,\nAnd drew the head erect;\nAnd then an awful leisure was,\nOur faith to regulate.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The First Lesson.",
    "body": "Not in this world to see his face\nSounds long, until I read the place\nWhere this is said to be\nBut just the primer to a life\nUnopened, rare, upon the shelf,\nClasped yet to him and me.\n\nAnd yet, my primer suits me so\nI would not choose a book to know\nThan that, be sweeter wise;\nMight some one else so learned be,\nAnd leave me just my A B C,\nHimself could have the skies.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxii.",
    "body": "The bustle in a house\nThe morning after death\nIs solemnest of industries\nEnacted upon earth, --\n\nThe sweeping up the heart,\nAnd putting love away\nWe shall not want to use again\nUntil eternity.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxiii.",
    "body": "I reason, earth is short,\nAnd anguish absolute,\nAnd many hurt;\nBut what of that?\n\nI reason, we could die:\nThe best vitality\nCannot excel decay;\nBut what of that?\n\nI reason that in heaven\nSomehow, it will be even,\nSome new equation given;\nBut what of that?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxiv.",
    "body": "Afraid? Of whom am I afraid?\nNot death; for who is he?\nThe porter of my father's lodge\nAs much abasheth me.\n\nOf life? 'T were odd I fear a thing\nThat comprehendeth me\nIn one or more existences\nAt Deity's decree.\n\nOf resurrection? Is the east\nAfraid to trust the morn\nWith her fastidious forehead?\nAs soon impeach my crown!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dying.",
    "body": "The sun kept setting, setting still;\nNo hue of afternoon\nUpon the village I perceived, --\nFrom house to house 't was noon.\n\nThe dusk kept dropping, dropping still;\nNo dew upon the grass,\nBut only on my forehead stopped,\nAnd wandered in my face.\n\nMy feet kept drowsing, drowsing still,\nMy fingers were awake;\nYet why so little sound myself\nUnto my seeming make?\n\nHow well I knew the light before!\nI could not see it now.\n'T is dying, I am doing; but\nI'm not afraid to know.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxvi.",
    "body": "Two swimmers wrestled on the spar\nUntil the morning sun,\nWhen one turned smiling to the land.\nO God, the other one!\n\nThe stray ships passing spied a face\nUpon the waters borne,\nWith eyes in death still begging raised,\nAnd hands beseeching thrown.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Chariot.",
    "body": "Because I could not stop for Death,\nHe kindly stopped for me;\nThe carriage held but just ourselves\nAnd Immortality.\n\nWe slowly drove, he knew no haste,\nAnd I had put away\nMy labor, and my leisure too,\nFor his civility.\n\nWe passed the school where children played,\nTheir lessons scarcely done;\nWe passed the fields of gazing grain,\nWe passed the setting sun.\n\nWe paused before a house that seemed\nA swelling of the ground;\nThe roof was scarcely visible,\nThe cornice but a mound.\n\nSince then 't is centuries; but each\nFeels shorter than the day\nI first surmised the horses' heads\nWere toward eternity.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxviii.",
    "body": "She went as quiet as the dew\nFrom a familiar flower.\nNot like the dew did she return\nAt the accustomed hour!\n\nShe dropt as softly as a star\nFrom out my summer's eve;\nLess skilful than Leverrier\nIt's sorer to believe!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Resurgam.",
    "body": "At last to be identified!\nAt last, the lamps upon thy side,\nThe rest of life to see!\nPast midnight, past the morning star!\nPast sunrise! Ah! what leagues there are\nBetween our feet and day!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxx.",
    "body": "Except to heaven, she is nought;\nExcept for angels, lone;\nExcept to some wide-wandering bee,\nA flower superfluous blown;\n\nExcept for winds, provincial;\nExcept by butterflies,\nUnnoticed as a single dew\nThat on the acre lies.\n\nThe smallest housewife in the grass,\nYet take her from the lawn,\nAnd somebody has lost the face\nThat made existence home!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxi.",
    "body": "Death is a dialogue between\nThe spirit and the dust.\n\"Dissolve,\" says Death. The Spirit, \"Sir,\nI have another trust.\"\n\nDeath doubts it, argues from the ground.\nThe Spirit turns away,\nJust laying off, for evidence,\nAn overcoat of clay.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxii.",
    "body": "It was too late for man,\nBut early yet for God;\nCreation impotent to help,\nBut prayer remained our side.\n\nHow excellent the heaven,\nWhen earth cannot be had;\nHow hospitable, then, the face\nOf our old neighbor, God!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Along The Potomac.",
    "body": "When I was small, a woman died.\nTo-day her only boy\nWent up from the Potomac,\nHis face all victory,\n\nTo look at her; how slowly\nThe seasons must have turned\nTill bullets clipt an angle,\nAnd he passed quickly round!\n\nIf pride shall be in Paradise\nI never can decide;\nOf their imperial conduct,\nNo person testified.\n\nBut proud in apparition,\nThat woman and her boy\nPass back and forth before my brain,\nAs ever in the sky.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxiv.",
    "body": "The daisy follows soft the sun,\nAnd when his golden walk is done,\n   Sits shyly at his feet.\nHe, waking, finds the flower near.\n\"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?\"\n   \"Because, sir, love is sweet!\"\n\nWe are the flower, Thou the sun!\nForgive us, if as days decline,\n   We nearer steal to Thee, --\nEnamoured of the parting west,\nThe peace, the flight, the amethyst,\n   Night's possibility!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Emancipation.",
    "body": "No rack can torture me,\nMy soul's at liberty\nBehind this mortal bone\nThere knits a bolder one\n\nYou cannot prick with saw,\nNor rend with scymitar.\nTwo bodies therefore be;\nBind one, and one will flee.\n\nThe eagle of his nest\nNo easier divest\nAnd gain the sky,\nThan mayest thou,\n\nExcept thyself may be\nThine enemy;\nCaptivity is consciousness,\nSo's liberty.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lost.",
    "body": "I lost a world the other day.\nHas anybody found?\nYou'll know it by the row of stars\nAround its forehead bound.\n\nA rich man might not notice it;\nYet to my frugal eye\nOf more esteem than ducats.\nOh, find it, sir, for me!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxvii.",
    "body": "If I shouldn't be alive\nWhen the robins come,\nGive the one in red cravat\nA memorial crumb.\n\nIf I couldn't thank you,\nBeing just asleep,\nYou will know I'm trying\nWith my granite lip!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxviii.",
    "body": "Sleep is supposed to be,\nBy souls of sanity,\nThe shutting of the eye.\n\nSleep is the station grand\nDown which on either hand\nThe hosts of witness stand!\n\nMorn is supposed to be,\nBy people of degree,\nThe breaking of the day.\n\nMorning has not occurred!\nThat shall aurora be\nEast of eternity;\n\nOne with the banner gay,\nOne in the red array, --\nThat is the break of day.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxix.",
    "body": "I shall know why, when time is over,\nAnd I have ceased to wonder why;\nChrist will explain each separate anguish\nIn the fair schoolroom of the sky.\n\nHe will tell me what Peter promised,\nAnd I, for wonder at his woe,\nI shall forget the drop of anguish\nThat scalds me now, that scalds me now.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xl.",
    "body": "I never lost as much but twice,\nAnd that was in the sod;\nTwice have I stood a beggar\nBefore the door of God!\n\nAngels, twice descending,\nReimbursed my store.\nBurglar, banker, father,\nI am poor once more!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Poems",
    "body": "by EMILY DICKINSON\n\nSecond Series\n\n\n\n\nEdited by two of her friends\n\nMABEL LOOMIS TODD and T.W. HIGGINSON",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Preface",
    "body": "The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily Dickinson's\npoems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modern\nartificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of the\nqualities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatest\nthemes,--life and love and death. That \"irresistible needle-touch,\"\nas one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the very\ncore of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic as\nit has been unexpected even to those who knew best her compelling\npower.  This second volume, while open to the same criticism as to\nform with its predecessor, shows also the same shining beauties.\n\nAlthough Emily Dickinson had been in the habit of sending\noccasional poems to friends and correspondents, the full extent of\nher writing was by no means imagined by them. Her friend \"H.H.\"\nmust at least have suspected it, for in a letter dated 5th\nSeptember, 1884, she wrote:--\n\n\nMY DEAR FRIEND,-- What portfolios full of verses\nyou must have! It is a cruel wrong to your \"day and\ngeneration\" that you will not give them light.\n\nIf such a thing should happen as that I should outlive\nyou, I wish you would make me your literary legatee\nand executor. Surely after you are what is called\n\"dead\" you will be willing that the poor ghosts you\nhave left behind should be cheered and pleased by your\nverses, will you not? You ought to be. I do not think\nwe have a right to withhold from the world a word or\na thought any more than a deed which might help a\nsingle soul. . . .\n\n                Truly yours,",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Helen Jackson.",
    "body": "The \"portfolios\" were found, shortly after Emily Dickinson's death,\nby her sister and only surviving housemate. Most of the poems had\nbeen carefully copied on sheets of note-paper, and tied in little\nfascicules, each of six or eight sheets. While many of them bear\nevidence of having been thrown off at white heat, still more had\nreceived thoughtful revision. There is the frequent addition of\nrather perplexing foot-notes, affording large choice of words and\nphrases. And in the copies which she sent to friends, sometimes one\nform, sometimes another, is found to have been used. Without\nimportant exception, her friends have generously placed at the\ndisposal of the Editors any poems they had received from her; and\nthese have given the obvious advantage of comparison among several\nrenderings of the same verse.\n\nTo what further rigorous pruning her verses would have been\nsubjected had she published them herself, we cannot know. They\nshould be regarded in many cases as merely the first strong and\nsuggestive sketches of an artist, intended to be embodied at some\ntime in the finished picture.\n\nEmily Dickinson appears to have written her first poems in the\nwinter of 1862. In a letter to oone of the present Editors the\nApril following, she says, \"I made no verse, but one or two, until\nthis winter.\"\n\nThe handwriting was at first somewhat like the delicate, running\nItalian hand of our elder gentlewomen; but as she advanced in\nbreadth of thought, it grew bolder and more abrupt, until in her\nlatest years each letter stood distinct and separate from its\nfellows. In most of her poems, particularly the later ones,\neverything by way of punctuation was discarded, except numerous\ndashes; and all important words began with capitals. The effect of\na page of her more recent manuscript is exceedingly quaint and\nstrong.  The fac-simile given in the present volume is from one of\nthe earlier transition periods. Although there is nowhere a date,\nthe handwriting makes it possible to arrange the poems with general\nchronologic accuracy.\n\nAs a rule, the verses were without titles; but \"A Country Burial,\"\n\"A Thunder-Storm,\" \"The Humming-Bird,\" and a few others were named\nby their author, frequently at the end,--sometimes only in the\naccompanying note, if sent to a friend.\n\nThe variation of readings, with the fact that she often wrote in\npencil and not always clearly, have at times thrown a good deal of\nresponsibility upon her Editors. But all interference not\nabsolutely inevitable has been avoided. The very roughness of her\nrendering is part of herself, and not lightly to be touched; for it\nseems in many cases that she intentionally avoided the smoother and\nmore usual rhymes.\n\nLike impressionist pictures, or Wagner's rugged music, the very\nabsence of conventional form challenges attention. In Emily\nDickinson's exacting hands, the especial, intrinsic fitness of a\nparticular order of words might not be sacrificed to anything\nvirtually extrinsic; and her verses all show a strange cadence of\ninner rhythmical music. Lines are always daringly constructed, and\nthe \"thought-rhyme\" appears frequently,--appealing, indeed, to an\nunrecognized sense more elusive than hearing.\n\nEmily Dickinson scrutinized everything with clear-eyed frankness.\nEvery subject was proper ground for legitimate study, even the\nsombre facts of death and burial, and the unknown life beyond. She\ntouches these themes sometimes lightly, sometimes almost\nhumorously, more often with weird and peculiar power; but she is\nnever by any chance frivolous or trivial. And while, as one critic\nhas said, she may exhibit toward God \"an Emersonian self-possession,\"\nit was because she looked upon all life with a candor as unprejudiced\nas it is rare.\n\nShe had tried society and the world, and found them lacking.  She\nwas not an invalid, and she lived in seclusion from no\nlove-disappointment. Her life was the normal blossoming of a nature\nintrospective to a high degree, whose best thought could not exist\nin pretence.\n\nStorm, wind, the wild March sky, sunsets and dawns; the birds and\nbees, butterflies and flowers of her garden, with a few trusted\nhuman friends, were sufficient companionship. The coming of the\nfirst robin was a jubilee beyond crowning of monarch or birthday of\npope; the first red leaf hurrying through \"the altered air,\" an\nepoch. Immortality was close about her; and while never morbid or\nmelancholy, she lived in its presence.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Amherst, Massachusetts,",
    "body": "            August, I891.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n    My nosegays are for captives;\n       Dim, long-expectant eyes,\n    Fingers denied the plucking,\n       Patient till paradise,\n\n    To such, if they should whisper\n       Of morning and the moor,\n    They bear no other errand,\n       And I, no other prayer.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ii.",
    "body": "I bring an unaccustomed wine\nTo lips long parching, next to mine,\nAnd summon them to drink.\n\nCrackling with fever, they essay;\nI turn my brimming eyes away,\nAnd come next hour to look.\n\nThe hands still hug the tardy glass;\nThe lips I would have cooled, alas!\nAre so superfluous cold,\n\nI would as soon attempt to warm\nThe bosoms where the frost has lain\nAges beneath the mould.\n\nSome other thirsty there may be\nTo whom this would have pointed me\nHad it remained to speak.\n\nAnd so I always bear the cup\nIf, haply, mine may be the drop\nSome pilgrim thirst to slake, --\n\nIf, haply, any say to me,\n\"Unto the little, unto me,\"\nWhen I at last awake.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "The nearest dream recedes, unrealized.\n      The heaven we chase\n      Like the June bee\n      Before the school-boy\n      Invites the race;\n      Stoops to an easy clover --\nDips -- evades -- teases -- deploys;\n      Then to the royal clouds\n      Lifts his light pinnace\n      Heedless of the boy\nStaring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.\n\n      Homesick for steadfast honey,\n      Ah! the bee flies not\nThat brews that rare variety.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iv.",
    "body": "We play at paste,\nTill qualified for pearl,\nThen drop the paste,\nAnd deem ourself a fool.\nThe shapes, though, were similar,\nAnd our new hands\nLearned gem-tactics\nPractising sands.\n\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nI found the phrase to every thought\nI ever had, but one;\nAnd that defies me, -- as a hand\nDid try to chalk the sun\n\nTo races nurtured in the dark; --\nHow would your own begin?\nCan blaze be done in cochineal,\nOr noon in mazarin?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hope.",
    "body": "Hope is the thing with feathers\nThat perches in the soul,\nAnd sings the tune without the words,\nAnd never stops at all,\n\nAnd sweetest in the gale is heard;\nAnd sore must be the storm\nThat could abash the little bird\nThat kept so many warm.\n\nI 've heard it in the chillest land,\nAnd on the strangest sea;\nYet, never, in extremity,\nIt asked a crumb of me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The White Heat.",
    "body": "Dare you see a soul at the white heat?\n   Then crouch within the door.\nRed is the fire's common tint;\n   But when the vivid ore\n\nHas sated flame's conditions,\n   Its quivering substance plays\nWithout a color but the light\n   Of unanointed blaze.\n\nLeast village boasts its blacksmith,\n   Whose anvil's even din\nStands symbol for the finer forge\n   That soundless tugs within,\n\nRefining these impatient ores\n   With hammer and with blaze,\nUntil the designated light\n   Repudiate the forge.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Triumphant.",
    "body": "Who never lost, are unprepared\nA coronet to find;\nWho never thirsted, flagons\nAnd cooling tamarind.\n\nWho never climbed the weary league --\nCan such a foot explore\nThe purple territories\nOn Pizarro's shore?\n\nHow many legions overcome?\nThe emperor will say.\nHow many colors taken\nOn Revolution Day?\n\nHow many bullets bearest?\nThe royal scar hast thou?\nAngels, write \"Promoted\"\nOn this soldier's brow!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Test.",
    "body": "I can wade grief,\nWhole pools of it, --\nI 'm used to that.\nBut the least push of joy\nBreaks up my feet,\nAnd I tip -- drunken.\nLet no pebble smile,\n'T was the new liquor, --\nThat was all!\n\nPower is only pain,\nStranded, through discipline,\nTill weights will hang.\nGive balm to giants,\nAnd they 'll wilt, like men.\nGive Himmaleh, --\nThey 'll carry him!\n\n\n\n\n\nX.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Escape.",
    "body": "I never hear the word \"escape\"\nWithout a quicker blood,\nA sudden expectation,\nA flying attitude.\n\nI never hear of prisons broad\nBy soldiers battered down,\nBut I tug childish at my bars, --\nOnly to fail again!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Compensation.",
    "body": "For each ecstatic instant\nWe must an anguish pay\nIn keen and quivering ratio\nTo the ecstasy.\n\nFor each beloved hour\nSharp pittances of years,\nBitter contested farthings\nAnd coffers heaped with tears.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Martyrs.",
    "body": "Through the straight pass of suffering\nThe martyrs even trod,\nTheir feet upon temptation,\nTheir faces upon God.\n\nA stately, shriven company;\nConvulsion playing round,\nHarmless as streaks of meteor\nUpon a planet's bound.\n\nTheir faith the everlasting troth;\nTheir expectation fair;\nThe needle to the north degree\nWades so, through polar air.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Prayer.",
    "body": "I meant to have but modest needs,\nSuch as content, and heaven;\nWithin my income these could lie,\nAnd life and I keep even.\n\nBut since the last included both,\nIt would suffice my prayer\nBut just for one to stipulate,\nAnd grace would grant the pair.\n\nAnd so, upon this wise I prayed, --\nGreat Spirit, give to me\nA heaven not so large as yours,\nBut large enough for me.\n\nA smile suffused Jehovah's face;\nThe cherubim withdrew;\nGrave saints stole out to look at me,\nAnd showed their dimples, too.\n\nI left the place with all my might, --\nMy prayer away I threw;\nThe quiet ages picked it up,\nAnd Judgment twinkled, too,\n\nThat one so honest be extant\nAs take the tale for true\nThat \"Whatsoever you shall ask,\nItself be given you.\"\n\nBut I, grown shrewder, scan the skies\nWith a suspicious air, --\nAs children, swindled for the first,\nAll swindlers be, infer.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xiv.",
    "body": "The thought beneath so slight a film\nIs more distinctly seen, --\nAs laces just reveal the surge,\nOr mists the Apennine.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xv.",
    "body": "The soul unto itself\nIs an imperial friend, --\nOr the most agonizing spy\nAn enemy could send.\n\nSecure against its own,\nNo treason it can fear;\nItself its sovereign, of itself\nThe soul should stand in awe.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvi.",
    "body": "Surgeons must be very careful\nWhen they take the knife!\nUnderneath their fine incisions\nStirs the culprit, -- Life!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Railway Train.",
    "body": "I like to see it lap the miles,\nAnd lick the valleys up,\nAnd stop to feed itself at tanks;\nAnd then, prodigious, step\n\nAround a pile of mountains,\nAnd, supercilious, peer\nIn shanties by the sides of roads;\nAnd then a quarry pare\n\nTo fit its sides, and crawl between,\nComplaining all the while\nIn horrid, hooting stanza;\nThen chase itself down hill\n\nAnd neigh like Boanerges;\nThen, punctual as a star,\nStop -- docile and omnipotent --\nAt its own stable door.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Show.",
    "body": "The show is not the show,\nBut they that go.\nMenagerie to me\nMy neighbor be.\nFair play --\nBoth went to see.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xix.",
    "body": "Delight becomes pictorial\nWhen viewed through pain, --\nMore fair, because impossible\nThat any gain.\n\nThe mountain at a given distance\nIn amber lies;\nApproached, the amber flits a little, --\nAnd that 's the skies!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xx.",
    "body": "A thought went up my mind to-day\nThat I have had before,\nBut did not finish, -- some way back,\nI could not fix the year,\n\nNor where it went, nor why it came\nThe second time to me,\nNor definitely what it was,\nHave I the art to say.\n\nBut somewhere in my soul, I know\nI 've met the thing before;\nIt just reminded me -- 't was all --\nAnd came my way no more.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxi.",
    "body": "Is Heaven a physician?\nThey say that He can heal,\nBut medicine posthumous\n   Is unavailable.\n\nIs Heaven an exchequer?\n   They speak of what we owe;\nBut that negotiation\n   I 'm not a party to.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Return.",
    "body": "Though I get home how late, how late!\nSo I get home, 't will compensate.\nBetter will be the ecstasy\nThat they have done expecting me,\nWhen, night descending, dumb and dark,\nThey hear my unexpected knock.\nTransporting must the moment be,\nBrewed from decades of agony!\n\nTo think just how the fire will burn,\nJust how long-cheated eyes will turn\nTo wonder what myself will say,\nAnd what itself will say to me,\nBeguiles the centuries of way!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxiii.",
    "body": "A poor torn heart, a tattered heart,\nThat sat it down to rest,\nNor noticed that the ebbing day\nFlowed silver to the west,\nNor noticed night did soft descend\nNor constellation burn,\nIntent upon the vision\nOf latitudes unknown.\n\nThe angels, happening that way,\nThis dusty heart espied;\nTenderly took it up from toil\nAnd carried it to God.\nThere, -- sandals for the barefoot;\nThere, -- gathered from the gales,\nDo the blue havens by the hand\nLead the wandering sails.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Too Much.",
    "body": "I should have been too glad, I see,\nToo lifted for the scant degree\n   Of life's penurious round;\nMy little circuit would have shamed\nThis new circumference, have blamed\n   The homelier time behind.\n\nI should have been too saved, I see,\nToo rescued; fear too dim to me\n   That I could spell the prayer\nI knew so perfect yesterday, --\nThat scalding one, \"Sabachthani,\"\n   Recited fluent here.\n\nEarth would have been too much, I see,\nAnd heaven not enough for me;\n   I should have had the joy\nWithout the fear to justify, --\nThe palm without the Calvary;\n   So, Saviour, crucify.\n\nDefeat whets victory, they say;\nThe reefs in old Gethsemane\n   Endear the shore beyond.\n'T is beggars banquets best define;\n'T is thirsting vitalizes wine, --\n   Faith faints to understand.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Shipwreck.",
    "body": "It tossed and tossed, --\nA little brig I knew, --\nO'ertook by blast,\nIt spun and spun,\nAnd groped delirious, for morn.\n\nIt slipped and slipped,\nAs one that drunken stepped;\nIts white foot tripped,\nThen dropped from sight.\n\nAh, brig, good-night\nTo crew and you;\nThe ocean's heart too smooth, too blue,\nTo break for you.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxvi.",
    "body": "Victory comes late,\nAnd is held low to freezing lips\nToo rapt with frost\nTo take it.\nHow sweet it would have tasted,\nJust a drop!\nWas God so economical?\nHis table 's spread too high for us\nUnless we dine on tip-toe.\nCrumbs fit such little mouths,\nCherries suit robins;\nThe eagle's golden breakfast\nStrangles them.\nGod keeps his oath to sparrows,\nWho of little love\nKnow how to starve!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Enough.",
    "body": "God gave a loaf to every bird,\nBut just a crumb to me;\nI dare not eat it, though I starve, --\nMy poignant luxury\nTo own it, touch it, prove the feat\nThat made the pellet mine, --\nToo happy in my sparrow chance\nFor ampler coveting.\n\nIt might be famine all around,\nI could not miss an ear,\nSuch plenty smiles upon my board,\nMy garner shows so fair.\nI wonder how the rich may feel, --\nAn Indiaman -- an Earl?\nI deem that I with but a crumb\nAm sovereign of them all.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxviii.",
    "body": "Experiment to me\nIs every one I meet.\nIf it contain a kernel?\nThe figure of a nut\n\nPresents upon a tree,\nEqually plausibly;\nBut meat within is requisite,\nTo squirrels and to me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "My Country'S Wardrobe.",
    "body": "My country need not change her gown,\nHer triple suit as sweet\nAs when 't was cut at Lexington,\nAnd first pronounced \"a fit.\"\n\nGreat Britain disapproves \"the stars;\"\nDisparagement discreet, --\nThere 's something in their attitude\nThat taunts her bayonet.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxx.",
    "body": "Faith is a fine invention\nFor gentlemen who see;\nBut microscopes are prudent\nIn an emergency!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxi.",
    "body": "Except the heaven had come so near,\nSo seemed to choose my door,\nThe distance would not haunt me so;\nI had not hoped before.\n\nBut just to hear the grace depart\nI never thought to see,\nAfflicts me with a double loss;\n'T is lost, and lost to me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxii.",
    "body": "Portraits are to daily faces\nAs an evening west\nTo a fine, pedantic sunshine\nIn a satin vest.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Duel.",
    "body": "I took my power in my hand.\nAnd went against the world;\n'T was not so much as David had,\nBut I was twice as bold.\n\nI aimed my pebble, but myself\nWas all the one that fell.\nWas it Goliath was too large,\nOr only I too small?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxiv.",
    "body": "A shady friend for torrid days\nIs easier to find\nThan one of higher temperature\nFor frigid hour of mind.\n\nThe vane a little to the east\nScares muslin souls away;\nIf broadcloth breasts are firmer\nThan those of organdy,\n\nWho is to blame? The weaver?\nAh! the bewildering thread!\nThe tapestries of paradise\nSo notelessly are made!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Goal.",
    "body": "Each life converges to some centre\nExpressed or still;\nExists in every human nature\nA goal,\n\nAdmitted scarcely to itself, it may be,\nToo fair\nFor credibility's temerity\nTo dare.\n\nAdored with caution, as a brittle heaven,\nTo reach\nWere hopeless as the rainbow's raiment\nTo touch,\n\nYet persevered toward, surer for the distance;\nHow high\nUnto the saints' slow diligence\nThe sky!\n\nUngained, it may be, by a life's low venture,\nBut then,\nEternity enables the endeavoring\nAgain.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sight.",
    "body": "Before I got my eye put out,\nI liked as well to see\nAs other creatures that have eyes,\nAnd know no other way.\n\nBut were it told to me, to-day,\nThat I might have the sky\nFor mine, I tell you that my heart\nWould split, for size of me.\n\nThe meadows mine, the mountains mine, --\nAll forests, stintless stars,\nAs much of noon as I could take\nBetween my finite eyes.\n\nThe motions of the dipping birds,\nThe lightning's jointed road,\nFor mine to look at when I liked, --\nThe news would strike me dead!\n\nSo safer, guess, with just my soul\nUpon the window-pane\nWhere other creatures put their eyes,\nIncautious of the sun.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxvii.",
    "body": "Talk with prudence to a beggar\nOf 'Potosi' and the mines!\nReverently to the hungry\nOf your viands and your wines!\n\nCautious, hint to any captive\nYou have passed enfranchised feet!\nAnecdotes of air in dungeons\nHave sometimes proved deadly sweet!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Preacher.",
    "body": "He preached upon \"breadth\" till it argued him narrow, --\nThe broad are too broad to define;\nAnd of \"truth\" until it proclaimed him a liar, --\nThe truth never flaunted a sign.\n\nSimplicity fled from his counterfeit presence\nAs gold the pyrites would shun.\nWhat confusion would cover the innocent Jesus\nTo meet so enabled a man!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxix.",
    "body": "Good night! which put the candle out?\nA jealous zephyr, not a doubt.\n   Ah! friend, you little knew\nHow long at that celestial wick\nThe angels labored diligent;\n   Extinguished, now, for you!\n\nIt might have been the lighthouse spark\nSome sailor, rowing in the dark,\n   Had importuned to see!\nIt might have been the waning lamp\nThat lit the drummer from the camp\n   To purer reveille!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xl.",
    "body": "When I hoped I feared,\nSince I hoped I dared;\nEverywhere alone\nAs a church remain;\nSpectre cannot harm,\nSerpent cannot charm;\nHe deposes doom,\nWho hath suffered him.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Deed.",
    "body": "A deed knocks first at thought,\nAnd then it knocks at will.\nThat is the manufacturing spot,\nAnd will at home and well.\n\nIt then goes out an act,\nOr is entombed so still\nThat only to the ear of God\nIts doom is audible.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Time'S Lesson.",
    "body": "Mine enemy is growing old, --\nI have at last revenge.\nThe palate of the hate departs;\nIf any would avenge, --\n\nLet him be quick, the viand flits,\nIt is a faded meat.\nAnger as soon as fed is dead;\n'T is starving makes it fat.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Remorse.",
    "body": "Remorse is memory awake,\nHer companies astir, --\nA presence of departed acts\nAt window and at door.\n\nIt's past set down before the soul,\nAnd lighted with a match,\nPerusal to facilitate\nOf its condensed despatch.\n\nRemorse is cureless, -- the disease\nNot even God can heal;\nFor 't is his institution, --\nThe complement of hell.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Shelter.",
    "body": "The body grows outside, --\nThe more convenient way, --\nThat if the spirit like to hide,\nIts temple stands alway\n\nAjar, secure, inviting;\nIt never did betray\nThe soul that asked its shelter\nIn timid honesty.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlv.",
    "body": "Undue significance a starving man attaches\nTo food\nFar off; he sighs, and therefore hopeless,\nAnd therefore good.\n\nPartaken, it relieves indeed, but proves us\nThat spices fly\nIn the receipt. It was the distance\nWas savory.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlvi.",
    "body": "Heart not so heavy as mine,\nWending late home,\nAs it passed my window\nWhistled itself a tune, --\n\nA careless snatch, a ballad,\nA ditty of the street;\nYet to my irritated ear\nAn anodyne so sweet,\n\nIt was as if a bobolink,\nSauntering this way,\nCarolled and mused and carolled,\nThen bubbled slow away.\n\nIt was as if a chirping brook\nUpon a toilsome way\nSet bleeding feet to minuets\nWithout the knowing why.\n\nTo-morrow, night will come again,\nWeary, perhaps, and sore.\nAh, bugle, by my window,\nI pray you stroll once more!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlvii.",
    "body": "I many times thought peace had come,\nWhen peace was far away;\nAs wrecked men deem they sight the land\nAt centre of the sea,\n\nAnd struggle slacker, but to prove,\nAs hopelessly as I,\nHow many the fictitious shores\nBefore the harbor lie.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlviii.",
    "body": "Unto my books so good to turn\nFar ends of tired days;\nIt half endears the abstinence,\nAnd pain is missed in praise.\n\nAs flavors cheer retarded guests\nWith banquetings to be,\nSo spices stimulate the time\nTill my small library.\n\nIt may be wilderness without,\nFar feet of failing men,\nBut holiday excludes the night,\nAnd it is bells within.\n\nI thank these kinsmen of the shelf;\nTheir countenances bland\nEnamour in prospective,\nAnd satisfy, obtained.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlix.",
    "body": "This merit hath the worst, --\nIt cannot be again.\nWhen Fate hath taunted last\nAnd thrown her furthest stone,\n\nThe maimed may pause and breathe,\nAnd glance securely round.\nThe deer invites no longer\nThan it eludes the hound.\n\n\n\n\n\nL.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hunger.",
    "body": "I had been hungry all the years;\nMy noon had come, to dine;\nI, trembling, drew the table near,\nAnd touched the curious wine.\n\n'T was this on tables I had seen,\nWhen turning, hungry, lone,\nI looked in windows, for the wealth\nI could not hope to own.\n\nI did not know the ample bread,\n'T was so unlike the crumb\nThe birds and I had often shared\nIn Nature's dining-room.\n\nThe plenty hurt me, 't was so new, --\nMyself felt ill and odd,\nAs berry of a mountain bush\nTransplanted to the road.\n\nNor was I hungry; so I found\nThat hunger was a way\nOf persons outside windows,\nThe entering takes away.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Li.",
    "body": "I gained it so,\n      By climbing slow,\nBy catching at the twigs that grow\nBetween the bliss and me.\n      It hung so high,\n      As well the sky\n      Attempt by strategy.\n\n\nI said I gained it, --\n      This was all.\nLook, how I clutch it,\n      Lest it fall,\nAnd I a pauper go;\nUnfitted by an instant's grace\nFor the contented beggar's face\nI wore an hour ago.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lii.",
    "body": "To learn the transport by the pain,\nAs blind men learn the sun;\nTo die of thirst, suspecting\nThat brooks in meadows run;\n\nTo stay the homesick, homesick feet\nUpon a foreign shore\nHaunted by native lands, the while,\nAnd blue, beloved air --\n\nThis is the sovereign anguish,\nThis, the signal woe!\nThese are the patient laureates\nWhose voices, trained below,\n\nAscend in ceaseless carol,\nInaudible, indeed,\nTo us, the duller scholars\nOf the mysterious bard!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Returning.",
    "body": "I years had been from home,\nAnd now, before the door,\nI dared not open, lest a face\nI never saw before\n\nStare vacant into mine\nAnd ask my business there.\nMy business, -- just a life I left,\nWas such still dwelling there?\n\nI fumbled at my nerve,\nI scanned the windows near;\nThe silence like an ocean rolled,\nAnd broke against my ear.\n\nI laughed a wooden laugh\nThat I could fear a door,\nWho danger and the dead had faced,\nBut never quaked before.\n\nI fitted to the latch\nMy hand, with trembling care,\nLest back the awful door should spring,\nAnd leave me standing there.\n\nI moved my fingers off\nAs cautiously as glass,\nAnd held my ears, and like a thief\nFled gasping from the house.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prayer.",
    "body": "Prayer is the little implement\nThrough which men reach\nWhere presence is denied them.\nThey fling their speech\n\nBy means of it in God's ear;\nIf then He hear,\nThis sums the apparatus\nComprised in prayer.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lv.",
    "body": "I know that he exists\nSomewhere, in silence.\nHe has hid his rare life\nFrom our gross eyes.\n\n'T is an instant's play,\n'T is a fond ambush,\nJust to make bliss\nEarn her own surprise!\n\nBut should the play\nProve piercing earnest,\nShould the glee glaze\nIn death's stiff stare,\n\nWould not the fun\nLook too expensive?\nWould not the jest\nHave crawled too far?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Melodies Unheard.",
    "body": "Musicians wrestle everywhere:\nAll day, among the crowded air,\n  I hear the silver strife;\nAnd -- waking long before the dawn --\nSuch transport breaks upon the town\n  I think it that \"new life!\"\n\nIt is not bird, it has no nest;\nNor band, in brass and scarlet dressed,\n  Nor tambourine, nor man;\nIt is not hymn from pulpit read, --\nThe morning stars the treble led\n  On time's first afternoon!\n\nSome say it is the spheres at play!\nSome say that bright majority\n  Of vanished dames and men!\nSome think it service in the place\nWhere we, with late, celestial face,\n  Please God, shall ascertain!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Called Back.",
    "body": "Just lost when I was saved!\nJust felt the world go by!\nJust girt me for the onset with eternity,\nWhen breath blew back,\nAnd on the other side\nI heard recede the disappointed tide!\n\nTherefore, as one returned, I feel,\nOdd secrets of the line to tell!\nSome sailor, skirting foreign shores,\nSome pale reporter from the awful doors\nBefore the seal!\n\nNext time, to stay!\nNext time, the things to see\nBy ear unheard,\nUnscrutinized by eye.\n\nNext time, to tarry,\nWhile the ages steal, --\nSlow tramp the centuries,\nAnd the cycles wheel.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Choice.",
    "body": "Of all the souls that stand create\nI have elected one.\nWhen sense from spirit files away,\nAnd subterfuge is done;\n\nWhen that which is and that which was\nApart, intrinsic, stand,\nAnd this brief tragedy of flesh\nIs shifted like a sand;\n\nWhen figures show their royal front\nAnd mists are carved away, --\nBehold the atom I preferred\nTo all the lists of clay!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ii.",
    "body": "I have no life but this,\nTo lead it here;\nNor any death, but lest\nDispelled from there;\n\nNor tie to earths to come,\nNor action new,\nExcept through this extent,\nThe realm of you.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "Your riches taught me poverty.\nMyself a millionnaire\nIn little wealths, -- as girls could boast, --\nTill broad as Buenos Ayre,\n\nYou drifted your dominions\nA different Peru;\nAnd I esteemed all poverty,\nFor life's estate with you.\n\nOf mines I little know, myself,\nBut just the names of gems, --\nThe colors of the commonest;\nAnd scarce of diadems\n\nSo much that, did I meet the queen,\nHer glory I should know:\nBut this must be a different wealth,\nTo miss it beggars so.\n\nI 'm sure 't is India all day\nTo those who look on you\nWithout a stint, without a blame, --\nMight I but be the Jew!\n\nI 'm sure it is Golconda,\nBeyond my power to deem, --\nTo have a smile for mine each day,\nHow better than a gem!\n\nAt least, it solaces to know\nThat there exists a gold,\nAlthough I prove it just in time\nIts distance to behold!\n\nIt 's far, far treasure to surmise,\nAnd estimate the pearl\nThat slipped my simple fingers through\nWhile just a girl at school!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Contract.",
    "body": "I gave myself to him,\nAnd took himself for pay.\nThe solemn contract of a life\nWas ratified this way.\n\nThe wealth might disappoint,\nMyself a poorer prove\nThan this great purchaser suspect,\nThe daily own of Love\n\nDepreciate the vision;\nBut, till the merchant buy,\nStill fable, in the isles of spice,\nThe subtle cargoes lie.\n\nAt least, 't is mutual risk, --\nSome found it mutual gain;\nSweet debt of Life, -- each night to owe,\nInsolvent, every noon.\n\n\n\n\n\nV.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Letter.",
    "body": "\"GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him --\nTell him the page I didn't write;\nTell him I only said the syntax,\nAnd left the verb and the pronoun out.\nTell him just how the fingers hurried,\nThen how they waded, slow, slow, slow;\nAnd then you wished you had eyes in your pages,\nSo you could see what moved them so.\n\n\"Tell him it wasn't a practised writer,\nYou guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;\nYou could hear the bodice tug, behind you,\nAs if it held but the might of a child;\nYou almost pitied it, you, it worked so.\nTell him -- No, you may quibble there,\nFor it would split his heart to know it,\nAnd then you and I were silenter.\n\n\"Tell him night finished before we finished,\nAnd the old clock kept neighing 'day!'\nAnd you got sleepy and begged to be ended --\nWhat could it hinder so, to say?\nTell him just how she sealed you, cautious,\nBut if he ask where you are hid\nUntil to-morrow, -- happy letter!\nGesture, coquette, and shake your head!\"",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vi.",
    "body": "The way I read a letter 's this:\n'T is first I lock the door,\nAnd push it with my fingers next,\nFor transport it be sure.\n\nAnd then I go the furthest off\nTo counteract a knock;\nThen draw my little letter forth\nAnd softly pick its lock.\n\nThen, glancing narrow at the wall,\nAnd narrow at the floor,\nFor firm conviction of a mouse\nNot exorcised before,\n\nPeruse how infinite I am\nTo -- no one that you know!\nAnd sigh for lack of heaven, -- but not\nThe heaven the creeds bestow.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vii.",
    "body": "Wild nights! Wild nights!\nWere I with thee,\nWild nights should be\nOur luxury!\n\nFutile the winds\nTo a heart in port, --\nDone with the compass,\nDone with the chart.\n\nRowing in Eden!\nAh! the sea!\nMight I but moor\nTo-night in thee!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "At Home.",
    "body": "The night was wide, and furnished scant\nWith but a single star,\nThat often as a cloud it met\nBlew out itself for fear.\n\nThe wind pursued the little bush,\nAnd drove away the leaves\nNovember left; then clambered up\nAnd fretted in the eaves.\n\nNo squirrel went abroad;\nA dog's belated feet\nLike intermittent plush were heard\nAdown the empty street.\n\nTo feel if blinds be fast,\nAnd closer to the fire\nHer little rocking-chair to draw,\nAnd shiver for the poor,\n\nThe housewife's gentle task.\n\"How pleasanter,\" said she\nUnto the sofa opposite,\n\"The sleet than May -- no thee!\"",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Possession.",
    "body": "Did the harebell loose her girdle\nTo the lover bee,\nWould the bee the harebell hallow\nMuch as formerly?\n\nDid the paradise, persuaded,\nYield her moat of pearl,\nWould the Eden be an Eden,\nOr the earl an earl?\n\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\nA charm invests a face\nImperfectly beheld, --\nThe lady dare not lift her veil\nFor fear it be dispelled.\n\nBut peers beyond her mesh,\nAnd wishes, and denies, --\nLest interview annul a want\nThat image satisfies.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Lovers.",
    "body": "The rose did caper on her cheek,\nHer bodice rose and fell,\nHer pretty speech, like drunken men,\nDid stagger pitiful.\n\nHer fingers fumbled at her work, --\nHer needle would not go;\nWhat ailed so smart a little maid\nIt puzzled me to know,\n\nTill opposite I spied a cheek\nThat bore another rose;\nJust opposite, another speech\nThat like the drunkard goes;\n\nA vest that, like the bodice, danced\nTo the immortal tune, --\nTill those two troubled little clocks\nTicked softly into one.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xii.",
    "body": "In lands I never saw, they say,\nImmortal Alps look down,\nWhose bonnets touch the firmament,\nWhose sandals touch the town, --\n\nMeek at whose everlasting feet\nA myriad daisies play.\nWhich, sir, are you, and which am I,\nUpon an August day?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xiii.",
    "body": "The moon is distant from the sea,\nAnd yet with amber hands\nShe leads him, docile as a boy,\nAlong appointed sands.\n\nHe never misses a degree;\nObedient to her eye,\nHe comes just so far toward the town,\nJust so far goes away.\n\nOh, Signor, thine the amber hand,\nAnd mine the distant sea, --\nObedient to the least command\nThine eyes impose on me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xiv.",
    "body": "He put the belt around my life, --\nI heard the buckle snap,\nAnd turned away, imperial,\nMy lifetime folding up\nDeliberate, as a duke would do\nA kingdom's title-deed, --\nHenceforth a dedicated sort,\nA member of the cloud.\n\nYet not too far to come at call,\nAnd do the little toils\nThat make the circuit of the rest,\nAnd deal occasional smiles\nTo lives that stoop to notice mine\nAnd kindly ask it in, --\nWhose invitation, knew you not\nFor whom I must decline?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Lost Jewel.",
    "body": "I held a jewel in my fingers\nAnd went to sleep.\nThe day was warm, and winds were prosy;\nI said: \"'T will keep.\"\n\nI woke and chid my honest fingers, --\nThe gem was gone;\nAnd now an amethyst remembrance\nIs all I own.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvi.",
    "body": "What if I say I shall not wait?\nWhat if I burst the fleshly gate\nAnd pass, escaped, to thee?\nWhat if I file this mortal off,\nSee where it hurt me, -- that 's enough, --\nAnd wade in liberty?\n\nThey cannot take us any more, --\nDungeons may call, and guns implore;\nUnmeaning now, to me,\nAs laughter was an hour ago,\nOr laces, or a travelling show,\nOr who died yesterday!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mother Nature.",
    "body": "Nature, the gentlest mother,\nImpatient of no child,\nThe feeblest or the waywardest, --\nHer admonition mild\n\nIn forest and the hill\nBy traveller is heard,\nRestraining rampant squirrel\nOr too impetuous bird.\n\nHow fair her conversation,\nA summer afternoon, --\nHer household, her assembly;\nAnd when the sun goes down\n\nHer voice among the aisles\nIncites the timid prayer\nOf the minutest cricket,\nThe most unworthy flower.\n\nWhen all the children sleep\nShe turns as long away\nAs will suffice to light her lamps;\nThen, bending from the sky\n\nWith infinite affection\nAnd infiniter care,\nHer golden finger on her lip,\nWills silence everywhere.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Out Of The Morning.",
    "body": "Will there really be a morning?\nIs there such a thing as day?\nCould I see it from the mountains\nIf I were as tall as they?\n\nHas it feet like water-lilies?\nHas it feathers like a bird?\nIs it brought from famous countries\nOf which I have never heard?\n\nOh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!\nOh, some wise man from the skies!\nPlease to tell a little pilgrim\nWhere the place called morning lies!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "At half-past three a single bird\nUnto a silent sky\nPropounded but a single term\nOf cautious melody.\n\nAt half-past four, experiment\nHad subjugated test,\nAnd lo! her silver principle\nSupplanted all the rest.\n\nAt half-past seven, element\nNor implement was seen,\nAnd place was where the presence was,\nCircumference between.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Day'S Parlor.",
    "body": "The day came slow, till five o'clock,\nThen sprang before the hills\nLike hindered rubies, or the light\nA sudden musket spills.\n\nThe purple could not keep the east,\nThe sunrise shook from fold,\nLike breadths of topaz, packed a night,\nThe lady just unrolled.\n\nThe happy winds their timbrels took;\nThe birds, in docile rows,\nArranged themselves around their prince\n(The wind is prince of those).\n\nThe orchard sparkled like a Jew, --\nHow mighty 't was, to stay\nA guest in this stupendous place,\nThe parlor of the day!\n\n\n\n\n\nV.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Sun'S Wooing.",
    "body": "The sun just touched the morning;\nThe morning, happy thing,\nSupposed that he had come to dwell,\nAnd life would be all spring.\n\nShe felt herself supremer, --\nA raised, ethereal thing;\nHenceforth for her what holiday!\nMeanwhile, her wheeling king\n\nTrailed slow along the orchards\nHis haughty, spangled hems,\nLeaving a new necessity, --\nThe want of diadems!\n\nThe morning fluttered, staggered,\nFelt feebly for her crown, --\nHer unanointed forehead\nHenceforth her only one.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Robin.",
    "body": "The robin is the one\nThat interrupts the morn\nWith hurried, few, express reports\nWhen March is scarcely on.\n\nThe robin is the one\nThat overflows the noon\nWith her cherubic quantity,\nAn April but begun.\n\nThe robin is the one\nThat speechless from her nest\nSubmits that home and certainty\nAnd sanctity are best.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Butterfly'S Day.",
    "body": "From cocoon forth a butterfly\nAs lady from her door\nEmerged -- a summer afternoon --\nRepairing everywhere,\n\nWithout design, that I could trace,\nExcept to stray abroad\nOn miscellaneous enterprise\nThe clovers understood.\n\nHer pretty parasol was seen\nContracting in a field\nWhere men made hay, then struggling hard\nWith an opposing cloud,\n\nWhere parties, phantom as herself,\nTo Nowhere seemed to go\nIn purposeless circumference,\nAs 't were a tropic show.\n\nAnd notwithstanding bee that worked,\nAnd flower that zealous blew,\nThis audience of idleness\nDisdained them, from the sky,\n\nTill sundown crept, a steady tide,\nAnd men that made the hay,\nAnd afternoon, and butterfly,\nExtinguished in its sea.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Bluebird.",
    "body": "Before you thought of spring,\nExcept as a surmise,\nYou see, God bless his suddenness,\nA fellow in the skies\nOf independent hues,\nA little weather-worn,\nInspiriting habiliments\nOf indigo and brown.\n\nWith specimens of song,\nAs if for you to choose,\nDiscretion in the interval,\nWith gay delays he goes\nTo some superior tree\nWithout a single leaf,\nAnd shouts for joy to nobody\nBut his seraphic self!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "April.",
    "body": "An altered look about the hills;\nA Tyrian light the village fills;\nA wider sunrise in the dawn;\nA deeper twilight on the lawn;\nA print of a vermilion foot;\nA purple finger on the slope;\nA flippant fly upon the pane;\nA spider at his trade again;\nAn added strut in chanticleer;\nA flower expected everywhere;\nAn axe shrill singing in the woods;\nFern-odors on untravelled roads, --\nAll this, and more I cannot tell,\nA furtive look you know as well,\nAnd Nicodemus' mystery\nReceives its annual reply.\n\n\n\n\n\nX.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Sleeping Flowers.",
    "body": "\"Whose are the little beds,\" I asked,\n\"Which in the valleys lie?\"\nSome shook their heads, and others smiled,\nAnd no one made reply.\n\n\"Perhaps they did not hear,\" I said;\n\"I will inquire again.\nWhose are the beds, the tiny beds\nSo thick upon the plain?\"\n\n\"'T is daisy in the shortest;\nA little farther on,\nNearest the door to wake the first,\nLittle leontodon.\n\n\"'T is iris, sir, and aster,\nAnemone and bell,\nBatschia in the blanket red,\nAnd chubby daffodil.\"\n\nMeanwhile at many cradles\nHer busy foot she plied,\nHumming the quaintest lullaby\nThat ever rocked a child.\n\n\"Hush! Epigea wakens! --\nThe crocus stirs her lids,\nRhodora's cheek is crimson, --\nShe's dreaming of the woods.\"\n\nThen, turning from them, reverent,\n\"Their bed-time 't is,\" she said;\n\"The bumble-bees will wake them\nWhen April woods are red.\"",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "My Rose.",
    "body": "Pigmy seraphs gone astray,\nVelvet people from Vevay,\nBelles from some lost summer day,\nBees' exclusive coterie.\nParis could not lay the fold\nBelted down with emerald;\nVenice could not show a cheek\nOf a tint so lustrous meek.\nNever such an ambuscade\nAs of brier and leaf displayed\nFor my little damask maid.\nI had rather wear her grace\nThan an earl's distinguished face;\nI had rather dwell like her\nThan be Duke of Exeter\nRoyalty enough for me\nTo subdue the bumble-bee!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Oriole'S Secret.",
    "body": "To hear an oriole sing\nMay be a common thing,\nOr only a divine.\n\nIt is not of the bird\nWho sings the same, unheard,\nAs unto crowd.\n\nThe fashion of the ear\nAttireth that it hear\nIn dun or fair.\n\nSo whether it be rune,\nOr whether it be none,\nIs of within;\n\nThe \"tune is in the tree,\"\nThe sceptic showeth me;\n\"No, sir! In thee!\"",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Oriole.",
    "body": "One of the ones that Midas touched,\nWho failed to touch us all,\nWas that confiding prodigal,\nThe blissful oriole.\n\nSo drunk, he disavows it\nWith badinage divine;\nSo dazzling, we mistake him\nFor an alighting mine.\n\nA pleader, a dissembler,\nAn epicure, a thief, --\nBetimes an oratorio,\nAn ecstasy in chief;\n\nThe Jesuit of orchards,\nHe cheats as he enchants\nOf an entire attar\nFor his decamping wants.\n\nThe splendor of a Burmah,\nThe meteor of birds,\nDeparting like a pageant\nOf ballads and of bards.\n\nI never thought that Jason sought\nFor any golden fleece;\nBut then I am a rural man,\nWith thoughts that make for peace.\n\nBut if there were a Jason,\nTradition suffer me\nBehold his lost emolument\nUpon the apple-tree.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "In Shadow.",
    "body": "I dreaded that first robin so,\nBut he is mastered now,\nAnd I 'm accustomed to him grown, --\nHe hurts a little, though.\n\nI thought if I could only live\nTill that first shout got by,\nNot all pianos in the woods\nHad power to mangle me.\n\nI dared not meet the daffodils,\nFor fear their yellow gown\nWould pierce me with a fashion\nSo foreign to my own.\n\nI wished the grass would hurry,\nSo when 't was time to see,\nHe 'd be too tall, the tallest one\nCould stretch to look at me.\n\nI could not bear the bees should come,\nI wished they 'd stay away\nIn those dim countries where they go:\nWhat word had they for me?\n\nThey 're here, though; not a creature failed,\nNo blossom stayed away\nIn gentle deference to me,\nThe Queen of Calvary.\n\nEach one salutes me as he goes,\nAnd I my childish plumes\nLift, in bereaved acknowledgment\nOf their unthinking drums.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Humming-Bird.",
    "body": "A route of evanescence\nWith a revolving wheel;\nA resonance of emerald,\nA rush of cochineal;\nAnd every blossom on the bush\nAdjusts its tumbled head, --\nThe mail from Tunis, probably,\nAn easy morning's ride.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Secrets.",
    "body": "The skies can't keep their secret!\nThey tell it to the hills --\nThe hills just tell the orchards --\nAnd they the daffodils!\n\nA bird, by chance, that goes that way\nSoft overheard the whole.\nIf I should bribe the little bird,\nWho knows but she would tell?\n\nI think I won't, however,\nIt's finer not to know;\nIf summer were an axiom,\nWhat sorcery had snow?\n\nSo keep your secret, Father!\nI would not, if I could,\nKnow what the sapphire fellows do,\nIn your new-fashioned world!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvii.",
    "body": "Who robbed the woods,\nThe trusting woods?\nThe unsuspecting trees\nBrought out their burrs and mosses\nHis fantasy to please.\nHe scanned their trinkets, curious,\nHe grasped, he bore away.\nWhat will the solemn hemlock,\nWhat will the fir-tree say?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Two Voyagers.",
    "body": "Two butterflies went out at noon\nAnd waltzed above a stream,\nThen stepped straight through the firmament\nAnd rested on a beam;\n\nAnd then together bore away\nUpon a shining sea, --\nThough never yet, in any port,\nTheir coming mentioned be.\n\nIf spoken by the distant bird,\nIf met in ether sea\nBy frigate or by merchantman,\nReport was not to me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "By The Sea.",
    "body": "I started early, took my dog,\nAnd visited the sea;\nThe mermaids in the basement\nCame out to look at me,\n\nAnd frigates in the upper floor\nExtended hempen hands,\nPresuming me to be a mouse\nAground, upon the sands.\n\nBut no man moved me till the tide\nWent past my simple shoe,\nAnd past my apron and my belt,\nAnd past my bodice too,\n\nAnd made as he would eat me up\nAs wholly as a dew\nUpon a dandelion's sleeve --\nAnd then I started too.\n\nAnd he -- he followed close behind;\nI felt his silver heel\nUpon my ankle, -- then my shoes\nWould overflow with pearl.\n\nUntil we met the solid town,\nNo man he seemed to know;\nAnd bowing with a mighty look\nAt me, the sea withdrew.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Old-Fashioned.",
    "body": "Arcturus is his other name, --\nI'd rather call him star!\nIt's so unkind of science\nTo go and interfere!\n\nI pull a flower from the woods, --\nA monster with a glass\nComputes the stamens in a breath,\nAnd has her in a class.\n\nWhereas I took the butterfly\nAforetime in my hat,\nHe sits erect in cabinets,\nThe clover-bells forgot.\n\nWhat once was heaven, is zenith now.\nWhere I proposed to go\nWhen time's brief masquerade was done,\nIs mapped, and charted too!\n\nWhat if the poles should frisk about\nAnd stand upon their heads!\nI hope I 'm ready for the worst,\nWhatever prank betides!\n\nPerhaps the kingdom of Heaven 's changed!\nI hope the children there\nWon't be new-fashioned when I come,\nAnd laugh at me, and stare!\n\nI hope the father in the skies\nWill lift his little girl, --\nOld-fashioned, naughty, everything, --\nOver the stile of pearl!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Tempest.",
    "body": "An awful tempest mashed the air,\nThe clouds were gaunt and few;\nA black, as of a spectre's cloak,\nHid heaven and earth from view.\n\nThe creatures chuckled on the roofs\nAnd whistled in the air,\nAnd shook their fists and gnashed their teeth.\nAnd swung their frenzied hair.\n\nThe morning lit, the birds arose;\nThe monster's faded eyes\nTurned slowly to his native coast,\nAnd peace was Paradise!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Sea.",
    "body": "An everywhere of silver,\nWith ropes of sand\nTo keep it from effacing\nThe track called land.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "In The Garden.",
    "body": "A bird came down the walk:\nHe did not know I saw;\nHe bit an angle-worm in halves\nAnd ate the fellow, raw.\n\nAnd then he drank a dew\nFrom a convenient grass,\nAnd then hopped sidewise to the wall\nTo let a beetle pass.\n\nHe glanced with rapid eyes\nThat hurried all abroad, --\nThey looked like frightened beads, I thought;\nHe stirred his velvet head\n\nLike one in danger; cautious,\nI offered him a crumb,\nAnd he unrolled his feathers\nAnd rowed him softer home\n\nThan oars divide the ocean,\nToo silver for a seam,\nOr butterflies, off banks of noon,\nLeap, splashless, as they swim.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Snake.",
    "body": "A narrow fellow in the grass\nOccasionally rides;\nYou may have met him, -- did you not,\nHis notice sudden is.\n\nThe grass divides as with a comb,\nA spotted shaft is seen;\nAnd then it closes at your feet\nAnd opens further on.\n\nHe likes a boggy acre,\nA floor too cool for corn.\nYet when a child, and barefoot,\nI more than once, at morn,\n\nHave passed, I thought, a whip-lash\nUnbraiding in the sun, --\nWhen, stooping to secure it,\nIt wrinkled, and was gone.\n\nSeveral of nature's people\nI know, and they know me;\nI feel for them a transport\nOf cordiality;\n\nBut never met this fellow,\nAttended or alone,\nWithout a tighter breathing,\nAnd zero at the bone.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Mushroom.",
    "body": "The mushroom is the elf of plants,\nAt evening it is not;\nAt morning in a truffled hut\nIt stops upon a spot\n\nAs if it tarried always;\nAnd yet its whole career\nIs shorter than a snake's delay,\nAnd fleeter than a tare.\n\n'T is vegetation's juggler,\nThe germ of alibi;\nDoth like a bubble antedate,\nAnd like a bubble hie.\n\nI feel as if the grass were pleased\nTo have it intermit;\nThe surreptitious scion\nOf summer's circumspect.\n\nHad nature any outcast face,\nCould she a son contemn,\nHad nature an Iscariot,\nThat mushroom, -- it is him.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Storm.",
    "body": "There came a wind like a bugle;\nIt quivered through the grass,\nAnd a green chill upon the heat\nSo ominous did pass\nWe barred the windows and the doors\nAs from an emerald ghost;\nThe doom's electric moccason\nThat very instant passed.\nOn a strange mob of panting trees,\nAnd fences fled away,\nAnd rivers where the houses ran\nThe living looked that day.\nThe bell within the steeple wild\nThe flying tidings whirled.\nHow much can come\nAnd much can go,\nAnd yet abide the world!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Spider.",
    "body": "A spider sewed at night\nWithout a light\nUpon an arc of white.\nIf ruff it was of dame\nOr shroud of gnome,\nHimself, himself inform.\nOf immortality\nHis strategy\nWas physiognomy.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxviii.",
    "body": "I know a place where summer strives\nWith such a practised frost,\nShe each year leads her daisies back,\nRecording briefly, \"Lost.\"\n\nBut when the south wind stirs the pools\nAnd struggles in the lanes,\nHer heart misgives her for her vow,\nAnd she pours soft refrains\n\nInto the lap of adamant,\nAnd spices, and the dew,\nThat stiffens quietly to quartz,\nUpon her amber shoe.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxix.",
    "body": "The one that could repeat the summer day\nWere greater than itself, though he\nMinutest of mankind might be.\nAnd who could reproduce the sun,\nAt period of going down --\nThe lingering and the stain, I mean --\nWhen Orient has been outgrown,\nAnd Occident becomes unknown,\nHis name remain.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Wind'S Visit.",
    "body": "The wind tapped like a tired man,\nAnd like a host, \"Come in,\"\nI boldly answered; entered then\nMy residence within\n\nA rapid, footless guest,\nTo offer whom a chair\nWere as impossible as hand\nA sofa to the air.\n\nNo bone had he to bind him,\nHis speech was like the push\nOf numerous humming-birds at once\nFrom a superior bush.\n\nHis countenance a billow,\nHis fingers, if he pass,\nLet go a music, as of tunes\nBlown tremulous in glass.\n\nHe visited, still flitting;\nThen, like a timid man,\nAgain he tapped -- 't was flurriedly --\nAnd I became alone.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxi.",
    "body": "Nature rarer uses yellow\n   Than another hue;\nSaves she all of that for sunsets, --\n   Prodigal of blue,\n\nSpending scarlet like a woman,\n   Yellow she affords\nOnly scantly and selectly,\n   Like a lover's words.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Gossip.",
    "body": "The leaves, like women, interchange\n  Sagacious confidence;\nSomewhat of nods, and somewhat of\n  Portentous inference,\n\nThe parties in both cases\n  Enjoining secrecy, --\nInviolable compact\n  To notoriety.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Simplicity.",
    "body": "How happy is the little stone\nThat rambles in the road alone,\nAnd doesn't care about careers,\nAnd exigencies never fears;\nWhose coat of elemental brown\nA passing universe put on;\nAnd independent as the sun,\nAssociates or glows alone,\nFulfilling absolute decree\nIn casual simplicity.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Storm.",
    "body": "It sounded as if the streets were running,\nAnd then the streets stood still.\nEclipse was all we could see at the window,\nAnd awe was all we could feel.\n\nBy and by the boldest stole out of his covert,\nTo see if time was there.\nNature was in her beryl apron,\nMixing fresher air.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Rat.",
    "body": "The rat is the concisest tenant.\nHe pays no rent, --\nRepudiates the obligation,\nOn schemes intent.\n\nBalking our wit\nTo sound or circumvent,\nHate cannot harm\nA foe so reticent.\n\nNeither decree\nProhibits him,\nLawful as\nEquilibrium.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxvi.",
    "body": "Frequently the woods are pink,\nFrequently are brown;\nFrequently the hills undress\nBehind my native town.\n\nOft a head is crested\nI was wont to see,\nAnd as oft a cranny\nWhere it used to be.\n\nAnd the earth, they tell me,\nOn its axis turned, --\nWonderful rotation\nBy but twelve performed!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Thunder-Storm.",
    "body": "The wind begun to rock the grass\nWith threatening tunes and low, --\nHe flung a menace at the earth,\nA menace at the sky.\n\nThe leaves unhooked themselves from trees\nAnd started all abroad;\nThe dust did scoop itself like hands\nAnd throw away the road.\n\nThe wagons quickened on the streets,\nThe thunder hurried slow;\nThe lightning showed a yellow beak,\nAnd then a livid claw.\n\nThe birds put up the bars to nests,\nThe cattle fled to barns;\nThere came one drop of giant rain,\nAnd then, as if the hands\n\nThat held the dams had parted hold,\nThe waters wrecked the sky,\nBut overlooked my father's house,\nJust quartering a tree.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "With Flowers.",
    "body": "South winds jostle them,\nBumblebees come,\nHover, hesitate,\nDrink, and are gone.\n\nButterflies pause\nOn their passage Cashmere;\nI, softly plucking,\nPresent them here!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sunset.",
    "body": "Where ships of purple gently toss\nOn seas of daffodil,\nFantastic sailors mingle,\nAnd then -- the wharf is still.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xl.",
    "body": "She sweeps with many-colored brooms,\nAnd leaves the shreds behind;\nOh, housewife in the evening west,\nCome back, and dust the pond!\n\nYou dropped a purple ravelling in,\nYou dropped an amber thread;\nAnd now you 've littered all the East\nWith duds of emerald!\n\nAnd still she plies her spotted brooms,\nAnd still the aprons fly,\nTill brooms fade softly into stars --\nAnd then I come away.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xli.",
    "body": "Like mighty footlights burned the red\nAt bases of the trees, --\nThe far theatricals of day\nExhibiting to these.\n\n'T was universe that did applaud\nWhile, chiefest of the crowd,\nEnabled by his royal dress,\nMyself distinguished God.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Problems.",
    "body": "Bring me the sunset in a cup,\nReckon the morning's flagons up,\n   And say how many dew;\nTell me how far the morning leaps,\nTell me what time the weaver sleeps\n   Who spun the breadths of blue!\n\nWrite me how many notes there be\nIn the new robin's ecstasy\n   Among astonished boughs;\nHow many trips the tortoise makes,\nHow many cups the bee partakes, --\n   The debauchee of dews!\n\nAlso, who laid the rainbow's piers,\nAlso, who leads the docile spheres\n   By withes of supple blue?\nWhose fingers string the stalactite,\nWho counts the wampum of the night,\n   To see that none is due?\n\nWho built this little Alban house\nAnd shut the windows down so close\n   My spirit cannot see?\nWho 'll let me out some gala day,\nWith implements to fly away,\n   Passing pomposity?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Juggler Of Day.",
    "body": "Blazing in gold and quenching in purple,\nLeaping like leopards to the sky,\nThen at the feet of the old horizon\nLaying her spotted face, to die;\n\nStooping as low as the otter's window,\nTouching the roof and tinting the barn,\nKissing her bonnet to the meadow, --\nAnd the juggler of day is gone!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "My Cricket.",
    "body": "Farther in summer than the birds,\nPathetic from the grass,\nA minor nation celebrates\nIts unobtrusive mass.\n\nNo ordinance is seen,\nSo gradual the grace,\nA pensive custom it becomes,\nEnlarging loneliness.\n\nAntiquest felt at noon\nWhen August, burning low,\nCalls forth this spectral canticle,\nRepose to typify.\n\nRemit as yet no grace,\nNo furrow on the glow,\nYet a druidic difference\nEnhances nature now.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlv.",
    "body": "As imperceptibly as grief\nThe summer lapsed away, --\nToo imperceptible, at last,\nTo seem like perfidy.\n\nA quietness distilled,\nAs twilight long begun,\nOr Nature, spending with herself\nSequestered afternoon.\n\nThe dusk drew earlier in,\nThe morning foreign shone, --\nA courteous, yet harrowing grace,\nAs guest who would be gone.\n\nAnd thus, without a wing,\nOr service of a keel,\nOur summer made her light escape\nInto the beautiful.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlvi.",
    "body": "It can't be summer, -- that got through;\nIt 's early yet for spring;\nThere 's that long town of white to cross\nBefore the blackbirds sing.\n\nIt can't be dying, -- it's too rouge, --\nThe dead shall go in white.\nSo sunset shuts my question down\nWith clasps of chrysolite.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Summer'S Obsequies.",
    "body": "The gentian weaves her fringes,\nThe maple's loom is red.\nMy departing blossoms\nObviate parade.\n\nA brief, but patient illness,\nAn hour to prepare;\nAnd one, below this morning,\nIs where the angels are.\n\nIt was a short procession, --\nThe bobolink was there,\nAn aged bee addressed us,\nAnd then we knelt in prayer.\n\nWe trust that she was willing, --\nWe ask that we may be.\nSummer, sister, seraph,\nLet us go with thee!\n\nIn the name of the bee\nAnd of the butterfly\nAnd of the breeze, amen!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fringed Gentian.",
    "body": "God made a little gentian;\nIt tried to be a rose\nAnd failed, and all the summer laughed.\nBut just before the snows\nThere came a purple creature\nThat ravished all the hill;\nAnd summer hid her forehead,\nAnd mockery was still.\nThe frosts were her condition;\nThe Tyrian would not come\nUntil the North evoked it.\n\"Creator! shall I bloom?\"",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "November.",
    "body": "Besides the autumn poets sing,\nA few prosaic days\nA little this side of the snow\nAnd that side of the haze.\n\nA few incisive mornings,\nA few ascetic eyes, --\nGone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod,\nAnd Mr. Thomson's sheaves.\n\nStill is the bustle in the brook,\nSealed are the spicy valves;\nMesmeric fingers softly touch\nThe eyes of many elves.\n\nPerhaps a squirrel may remain,\nMy sentiments to share.\nGrant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,\nThy windy will to bear!\n\n\n\n\n\nL.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Snow.",
    "body": "It sifts from leaden sieves,\nIt powders all the wood,\nIt fills with alabaster wool\nThe wrinkles of the road.\n\nIt makes an even face\nOf mountain and of plain, --\nUnbroken forehead from the east\nUnto the east again.\n\nIt reaches to the fence,\nIt wraps it, rail by rail,\nTill it is lost in fleeces;\nIt flings a crystal veil\n\nOn stump and stack and stem, --\nThe summer's empty room,\nAcres of seams where harvests were,\nRecordless, but for them.\n\nIt ruffles wrists of posts,\nAs ankles of a queen, --\nThen stills its artisans like ghosts,\nDenying they have been.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Blue Jay.",
    "body": "No brigadier throughout the year\nSo civic as the jay.\nA neighbor and a warrior too,\nWith shrill felicity\n\nPursuing winds that censure us\nA February day,\nThe brother of the universe\nWas never blown away.\n\nThe snow and he are intimate;\nI 've often seen them play\nWhen heaven looked upon us all\nWith such severity,\n\nI felt apology were due\nTo an insulted sky,\nWhose pompous frown was nutriment\nTo their temerity.\n\nThe pillow of this daring head\nIs pungent evergreens;\nHis larder -- terse and militant --\nUnknown, refreshing things;\n\nHis character a tonic,\nHis future a dispute;\nUnfair an immortality\nThat leaves this neighbor out.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iv. Time And Eternity.",
    "body": "I.\n\nLet down the bars, O Death!\nThe tired flocks come in\nWhose bleating ceases to repeat,\nWhose wandering is done.\n\nThine is the stillest night,\nThine the securest fold;\nToo near thou art for seeking thee,\nToo tender to be told.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ii.",
    "body": "Going to heaven!\nI don't know when,\nPray do not ask me how, --\nIndeed, I 'm too astonished\nTo think of answering you!\nGoing to heaven! --\nHow dim it sounds!\nAnd yet it will be done\nAs sure as flocks go home at night\nUnto the shepherd's arm!\n\nPerhaps you 're going too!\nWho knows?\nIf you should get there first,\nSave just a little place for me\nClose to the two I lost!\n\nThe smallest \"robe\" will fit me,\nAnd just a bit of \"crown;\"\nFor you know we do not mind our dress\nWhen we are going home.\n\nI 'm glad I don't believe it,\nFor it would stop my breath,\nAnd I 'd like to look a little more\nAt such a curious earth!\nI am glad they did believe it\nWhom I have never found\nSince the mighty autumn afternoon\nI left them in the ground.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "At least to pray is left, is left.\nO Jesus! in the air\nI know not which thy chamber is, --\nI 'm knocking everywhere.\n\nThou stirrest earthquake in the South,\nAnd maelstrom in the sea;\nSay, Jesus Christ of Nazareth,\nHast thou no arm for me?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Epitaph.",
    "body": "Step lightly on this narrow spot!\nThe broadest land that grows\nIs not so ample as the breast\nThese emerald seams enclose.\n\nStep lofty; for this name is told\nAs far as cannon dwell,\nOr flag subsist, or fame export\nHer deathless syllable.\n\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nMorns like these we parted;\nNoons like these she rose,\nFluttering first, then firmer,\nTo her fair repose.\n\nNever did she lisp it,\nAnd 't was not for me;\nShe was mute from transport,\nI, from agony!\n\nTill the evening, nearing,\nOne the shutters drew --\nQuick! a sharper rustling!\nAnd this linnet flew!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vi.",
    "body": "A death-blow is a life-blow to some\nWho, till they died, did not alive become;\nWho, had they lived, had died, but when\nThey died, vitality begun.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vii.",
    "body": "I read my sentence steadily,\nReviewed it with my eyes,\nTo see that I made no mistake\nIn its extremest clause, --\n\nThe date, and manner of the shame;\nAnd then the pious form\nThat \"God have mercy\" on the soul\nThe jury voted him.\n\nI made my soul familiar\nWith her extremity,\nThat at the last it should not be\nA novel agony,\n\nBut she and Death, acquainted,\nMeet tranquilly as friends,\nSalute and pass without a hint --\nAnd there the matter ends.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Viii.",
    "body": "I have not told my garden yet,\nLest that should conquer me;\nI have not quite the strength now\nTo break it to the bee.\n\nI will not name it in the street,\nFor shops would stare, that I,\nSo shy, so very ignorant,\nShould have the face to die.\n\nThe hillsides must not know it,\nWhere I have rambled so,\nNor tell the loving forests\nThe day that I shall go,\n\nNor lisp it at the table,\nNor heedless by the way\nHint that within the riddle\nOne will walk to-day!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Battle-Field.",
    "body": "They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,\n   Like petals from a rose,\nWhen suddenly across the June\n   A wind with fingers goes.\n\nThey perished in the seamless grass, --\n   No eye could find the place;\nBut God on his repealless list\n   Can summon every face.\n\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\nThe only ghost I ever saw\nWas dressed in mechlin, -- so;\nHe wore no sandal on his foot,\nAnd stepped like flakes of snow.\nHis gait was soundless, like the bird,\nBut rapid, like the roe;\nHis fashions quaint, mosaic,\nOr, haply, mistletoe.\n\nHis conversation seldom,\nHis laughter like the breeze\nThat dies away in dimples\nAmong the pensive trees.\nOur interview was transient,--\nOf me, himself was shy;\nAnd God forbid I look behind\nSince that appalling day!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xi.",
    "body": "Some, too fragile for winter winds,\nThe thoughtful grave encloses, --\nTenderly tucking them in from frost\nBefore their feet are cold.\n\nNever the treasures in her nest\nThe cautious grave exposes,\nBuilding where schoolboy dare not look\nAnd sportsman is not bold.\n\nThis covert have all the children\nEarly aged, and often cold, --\nSparrows unnoticed by the Father;\nLambs for whom time had not a fold.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xii.",
    "body": "As by the dead we love to sit,\nBecome so wondrous dear,\nAs for the lost we grapple,\nThough all the rest are here, --\n\nIn broken mathematics\nWe estimate our prize,\nVast, in its fading ratio,\nTo our penurious eyes!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Memorials.",
    "body": "Death sets a thing significant\nThe eye had hurried by,\nExcept a perished creature\nEntreat us tenderly\n\nTo ponder little workmanships\nIn crayon or in wool,\nWith \"This was last her fingers did,\"\nIndustrious until\n\nThe thimble weighed too heavy,\nThe stitches stopped themselves,\nAnd then 't was put among the dust\nUpon the closet shelves.\n\nA book I have, a friend gave,\nWhose pencil, here and there,\nHad notched the place that pleased him, --\nAt rest his fingers are.\n\nNow, when I read, I read not,\nFor interrupting tears\nObliterate the etchings\nToo costly for repairs.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xiv.",
    "body": "I went to heaven, --\n'T was a small town,\nLit with a ruby,\nLathed with down.\nStiller than the fields\nAt the full dew,\nBeautiful as pictures\nNo man drew.\nPeople like the moth,\nOf mechlin, frames,\nDuties of gossamer,\nAnd eider names.\nAlmost contented\nI could be\n'Mong such unique\nSociety.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xv.",
    "body": "Their height in heaven comforts not,\nTheir glory nought to me;\n'T was best imperfect, as it was;\nI 'm finite, I can't see.\n\nThe house of supposition,\nThe glimmering frontier\nThat skirts the acres of perhaps,\nTo me shows insecure.\n\nThe wealth I had contented me;\nIf 't was a meaner size,\nThen I had counted it until\nIt pleased my narrow eyes\n\nBetter than larger values,\nHowever true their show;\nThis timid life of evidence\nKeeps pleading, \"I don't know.\"",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvi.",
    "body": "There is a shame of nobleness\nConfronting sudden pelf, --\nA finer shame of ecstasy\nConvicted of itself.\n\nA best disgrace a brave man feels,\nAcknowledged of the brave, --\nOne more \"Ye Blessed\" to be told;\nBut this involves the grave.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Triumph.",
    "body": "Triumph may be of several kinds.\nThere 's triumph in the room\nWhen that old imperator, Death,\nBy faith is overcome.\n\nThere 's triumph of the finer mind\nWhen truth, affronted long,\nAdvances calm to her supreme,\nHer God her only throng.\n\nA triumph when temptation's bribe\nIs slowly handed back,\nOne eye upon the heaven renounced\nAnd one upon the rack.\n\nSeverer triumph, by himself\nExperienced, who can pass\nAcquitted from that naked bar,\nJehovah's countenance!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xviii.",
    "body": "Pompless no life can pass away;\n    The lowliest career\nTo the same pageant wends its way\n    As that exalted here.\nHow cordial is the mystery!\n    The hospitable pall\nA \"this way\" beckons spaciously, --\n    A miracle for all!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xix.",
    "body": "I noticed people disappeared,\nWhen but a little child, --\nSupposed they visited remote,\nOr settled regions wild.\n\nNow know I they both visited\nAnd settled regions wild,\nBut did because they died, -- a fact\nWithheld the little child!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Following.",
    "body": "I had no cause to be awake,\nMy best was gone to sleep,\nAnd morn a new politeness took,\nAnd failed to wake them up,\n\nBut called the others clear,\nAnd passed their curtains by.\nSweet morning, when I over-sleep,\nKnock, recollect, for me!\n\nI looked at sunrise once,\nAnd then I looked at them,\nAnd wishfulness in me arose\nFor circumstance the same.\n\n'T was such an ample peace,\nIt could not hold a sigh, --\n'T was Sabbath with the bells divorced,\n'T was sunset all the day.\n\nSo choosing but a gown\nAnd taking but a prayer,\nThe only raiment I should need,\nI struggled, and was there.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxi.",
    "body": "If anybody's friend be dead,\nIt 's sharpest of the theme\nThe thinking how they walked alive,\nAt such and such a time.\n\nTheir costume, of a Sunday,\nSome manner of the hair, --\nA prank nobody knew but them,\nLost, in the sepulchre.\n\nHow warm they were on such a day:\nYou almost feel the date,\nSo short way off it seems; and now,\nThey 're centuries from that.\n\nHow pleased they were at what you said;\nYou try to touch the smile,\nAnd dip your fingers in the frost:\nWhen was it, can you tell,\n\nYou asked the company to tea,\nAcquaintance, just a few,\nAnd chatted close with this grand thing\nThat don't remember you?\n\nPast bows and invitations,\nPast interview, and vow,\nPast what ourselves can estimate, --\nThat makes the quick of woe!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Journey.",
    "body": "Our journey had advanced;\nOur feet were almost come\nTo that odd fork in Being's road,\nEternity by term.\n\nOur pace took sudden awe,\nOur feet reluctant led.\nBefore were cities, but between,\nThe forest of the dead.\n\nRetreat was out of hope, --\nBehind, a sealed route,\nEternity's white flag before,\nAnd God at every gate.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Country Burial.",
    "body": "Ample make this bed.\nMake this bed with awe;\nIn it wait till judgment break\nExcellent and fair.\n\nBe its mattress straight,\nBe its pillow round;\nLet no sunrise' yellow noise\nInterrupt this ground.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Going.",
    "body": "On such a night, or such a night,\nWould anybody care\nIf such a little figure\nSlipped quiet from its chair,\n\nSo quiet, oh, how quiet!\nThat nobody might know\nBut that the little figure\nRocked softer, to and fro?\n\nOn such a dawn, or such a dawn,\nWould anybody sigh\nThat such a little figure\nToo sound asleep did lie\n\nFor chanticleer to wake it, --\nOr stirring house below,\nOr giddy bird in orchard,\nOr early task to do?\n\nThere was a little figure plump\nFor every little knoll,\nBusy needles, and spools of thread,\nAnd trudging feet from school.\n\nPlaymates, and holidays, and nuts,\nAnd visions vast and small.\nStrange that the feet so precious charged\nShould reach so small a goal!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxv.",
    "body": "Essential oils are wrung:\nThe attar from the rose\nIs not expressed by suns alone,\nIt is the gift of screws.\n\nThe general rose decays;\nBut this, in lady's drawer,\nMakes summer when the lady lies\nIn ceaseless rosemary.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxvi.",
    "body": "I lived on dread; to those who know\nThe stimulus there is\nIn danger, other impetus\nIs numb and vital-less.\n\nAs 't were a spur upon the soul,\nA fear will urge it where\nTo go without the spectre's aid\nWere challenging despair.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxvii.",
    "body": "If I should die,\nAnd you should live,\nAnd time should gurgle on,\nAnd morn should beam,\nAnd noon should burn,\nAs it has usual done;\nIf birds should build as early,\nAnd bees as bustling go, --\nOne might depart at option\nFrom enterprise below!\n'T is sweet to know that stocks will stand\nWhen we with daisies lie,\nThat commerce will continue,\nAnd trades as briskly fly.\nIt makes the parting tranquil\nAnd keeps the soul serene,\nThat gentlemen so sprightly\nConduct the pleasing scene!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "At Length.",
    "body": "Her final summer was it,\nAnd yet we guessed it not;\nIf tenderer industriousness\nPervaded her, we thought\n\nA further force of life\nDeveloped from within, --\nWhen Death lit all the shortness up,\nAnd made the hurry plain.\n\nWe wondered at our blindness, --\nWhen nothing was to see\nBut her Carrara guide-post, --\nAt our stupidity,\n\nWhen, duller than our dullness,\nThe busy darling lay,\nSo busy was she, finishing,\nSo leisurely were we!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ghosts.",
    "body": "One need not be a chamber to be haunted,\nOne need not be a house;\nThe brain has corridors surpassing\nMaterial place.\n\nFar safer, of a midnight meeting\nExternal ghost,\nThan an interior confronting\nThat whiter host.\n\nFar safer through an Abbey gallop,\nThe stones achase,\nThan, moonless, one's own self encounter\nIn lonesome place.\n\nOurself, behind ourself concealed,\nShould startle most;\nAssassin, hid in our apartment,\nBe horror's least.\n\nThe prudent carries a revolver,\nHe bolts the door,\nO'erlooking a superior spectre\nMore near.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vanished.",
    "body": "She died, -- this was the way she died;\nAnd when her breath was done,\nTook up her simple wardrobe\nAnd started for the sun.\n\nHer little figure at the gate\nThe angels must have spied,\nSince I could never find her\nUpon the mortal side.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Precedence.",
    "body": "Wait till the majesty of Death\nInvests so mean a brow!\nAlmost a powdered footman\nMight dare to touch it now!\n\nWait till in everlasting robes\nThis democrat is dressed,\nThen prate about \"preferment\"\nAnd \"station\" and the rest!\n\nAround this quiet courtier\nObsequious angels wait!\nFull royal is his retinue,\nFull purple is his state!\n\nA lord might dare to lift the hat\nTo such a modest clay,\nSince that my Lord, \"the Lord of lords\"\nReceives unblushingly!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Gone.",
    "body": "Went up a year this evening!\nI recollect it well!\nAmid no bells nor bravos\nThe bystanders will tell!\nCheerful, as to the village,\nTranquil, as to repose,\nChastened, as to the chapel,\nThis humble tourist rose.\nDid not talk of returning,\nAlluded to no time\nWhen, were the gales propitious,\nWe might look for him;\nWas grateful for the roses\nIn life's diverse bouquet,\nTalked softly of new species\nTo pick another day.\n\nBeguiling thus the wonder,\nThe wondrous nearer drew;\nHands bustled at the moorings --\nThe crowd respectful grew.\nAscended from our vision\nTo countenances new!\nA difference, a daisy,\nIs all the rest I knew!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Requiem.",
    "body": "Taken from men this morning,\nCarried by men to-day,\nMet by the gods with banners\nWho marshalled her away.\n\nOne little maid from playmates,\nOne little mind from school, --\nThere must be guests in Eden;\nAll the rooms are full.\n\nFar as the east from even,\nDim as the border star, --\nCourtiers quaint, in kingdoms,\nOur departed are.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxiv.",
    "body": "What inn is this\nWhere for the night\nPeculiar traveller comes?\nWho is the landlord?\nWhere the maids?\nBehold, what curious rooms!\nNo ruddy fires on the hearth,\nNo brimming tankards flow.\nNecromancer, landlord,\nWho are these below?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxv.",
    "body": "It was not death, for I stood up,\nAnd all the dead lie down;\nIt was not night, for all the bells\nPut out their tongues, for noon.\n\nIt was not frost, for on my flesh\nI felt siroccos crawl, --\nNor fire, for just my marble feet\nCould keep a chancel cool.\n\nAnd yet it tasted like them all;\nThe figures I have seen\nSet orderly, for burial,\nReminded me of mine,\n\nAs if my life were shaven\nAnd fitted to a frame,\nAnd could not breathe without a key;\nAnd 't was like midnight, some,\n\nWhen everything that ticked has stopped,\nAnd space stares, all around,\nOr grisly frosts, first autumn morns,\nRepeal the beating ground.\n\nBut most like chaos, -- stopless, cool, --\nWithout a chance or spar,\nOr even a report of land\nTo justify despair.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Till The End.",
    "body": "I should not dare to leave my friend,\nBecause -- because if he should die\nWhile I was gone, and I -- too late --\nShould reach the heart that wanted me;\n\nIf I should disappoint the eyes\nThat hunted, hunted so, to see,\nAnd could not bear to shut until\nThey \"noticed\" me -- they noticed me;\n\nIf I should stab the patient faith\nSo sure I 'd come -- so sure I 'd come,\nIt listening, listening, went to sleep\nTelling my tardy name, --\n\nMy heart would wish it broke before,\nSince breaking then, since breaking then,\nWere useless as next morning's sun,\nWhere midnight frosts had lain!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Void.",
    "body": "Great streets of silence led away\nTo neighborhoods of pause;\nHere was no notice, no dissent,\nNo universe, no laws.\n\nBy clocks 't was morning, and for night\nThe bells at distance called;\nBut epoch had no basis here,\nFor period exhaled.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxviii.",
    "body": "A throe upon the features\nA hurry in the breath,\nAn ecstasy of parting\nDenominated \"Death,\" --\n\nAn anguish at the mention,\nWhich, when to patience grown,\nI 've known permission given\nTo rejoin its own.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Saved!",
    "body": "Of tribulation these are they\nDenoted by the white;\nThe spangled gowns, a lesser rank\nOf victors designate.\n\nAll these did conquer; but the ones\nWho overcame most times\nWear nothing commoner than snow,\nNo ornament but palms.\n\nSurrender is a sort unknown\nOn this superior soil;\nDefeat, an outgrown anguish,\nRemembered as the mile\n\nOur panting ankle barely gained\nWhen night devoured the road;\nBut we stood whispering in the house,\nAnd all we said was \"Saved\"!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xl.",
    "body": "I think just how my shape will rise\nWhen I shall be forgiven,\nTill hair and eyes and timid head\nAre out of sight, in heaven.\n\nI think just how my lips will weigh\nWith shapeless, quivering prayer\nThat you, so late, consider me,\nThe sparrow of your care.\n\nI mind me that of anguish sent,\nSome drifts were moved away\nBefore my simple bosom broke, --\nAnd why not this, if they?\n\nAnd so, until delirious borne\nI con that thing, -- \"forgiven,\" --\nTill with long fright and longer trust\nI drop my heart, unshriven!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Forgotten Grave.",
    "body": "After a hundred years\nNobody knows the place, --\nAgony, that enacted there,\nMotionless as peace.\n\nWeeds triumphant ranged,\nStrangers strolled and spelled\nAt the lone orthography\nOf the elder dead.\n\nWinds of summer fields\nRecollect the way, --\nInstinct picking up the key\nDropped by memory.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlii.",
    "body": "Lay this laurel on the one\nToo intrinsic for renown.\nLaurel! veil your deathless tree, --\nHim you chasten, that is he!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Poems",
    "body": "by EMILY DICKINSON\n\nThird Series\n\n\n\n\nEdited by",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mabel Loomis Todd",
    "body": "    It's all I have to bring to-day,\n      This, and my heart beside,\n    This, and my heart, and all the fields,\n      And all the meadows wide.\n    Be sure you count, should I forget, --\n      Some one the sum could tell, --\n    This, and my heart, and all the bees\n      Which in the clover dwell.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Preface.",
    "body": "The intellectual activity of Emily Dickinson was so great that\na large and characteristic choice is still possible among her\nliterary material, and this third volume of her verses is put\nforth in response to the repeated wish of the admirers of her\npeculiar genius. Much of Emily Dickinson's prose was rhythmic,\n--even rhymed, though frequently not set apart in lines.\n\nAlso many verses, written as such, were sent to friends in\nletters; these were published in 1894, in the volumes of her\n_Letters_. It has not been necessary, however, to include them in\nthis Series, and all have been omitted, except three or four\nexceptionally strong ones, as \"A Book,\" and \"With Flowers.\"\n\nThere is internal evidence that many of the poems were simply\nspontaneous flashes of insight, apparently unrelated to outward\ncircumstance. Others, however, had an obvious personal origin;\nfor example, the verses \"I had a Guinea golden,\" which seem to\nhave been sent to some friend travelling in Europe, as a dainty\nreminder of letter-writing delinquencies. The surroundings in\nwhich any of Emily Dickinson's verses are known to have been\nwritten usually serve to explain them clearly; but in general the\npresent volume is full of thoughts needing no interpretation to\nthose who apprehend this scintillating spirit.\n\n                                        M. L. T.\n\nAMHERST, _October_, 1896.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Real Riches.",
    "body": "'T is little I could care for pearls\n  Who own the ample sea;\nOr brooches, when the Emperor\n  With rubies pelteth me;\n\nOr gold, who am the Prince of Mines;\n  Or diamonds, when I see\nA diadem to fit a dome\n  Continual crowning me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Superiority To Fate.",
    "body": "Superiority to fate\n  Is difficult to learn.\n'T is not conferred by any,\n  But possible to earn\n\nA pittance at a time,\n  Until, to her surprise,\nThe soul with strict economy\n  Subsists till Paradise.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hope.",
    "body": "Hope is a subtle glutton;\n  He feeds upon the fair;\nAnd yet, inspected closely,\n  What abstinence is there!\n\nHis is the halcyon table\n  That never seats but one,\nAnd whatsoever is consumed\n  The same amounts remain.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Forbidden Fruit.",
    "body": "I.\n\nForbidden fruit a flavor has\n  That lawful orchards mocks;\nHow luscious lies the pea within\n  The pod that Duty locks!\n\n\n\n\n\nV.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ii.",
    "body": "Heaven is what I cannot reach!\n  The apple on the tree,\nProvided it do hopeless hang,\n  That 'heaven' is, to me.\n\nThe color on the cruising cloud,\n  The interdicted ground\nBehind the hill, the house behind, --\n  There Paradise is found!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Word.",
    "body": "A word is dead\nWhen it is said,\n  Some say.\nI say it just\nBegins to live\n  That day.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vii.",
    "body": "To venerate the simple days\n  Which lead the seasons by,\nNeeds but to remember\n  That from you or me\nThey may take the trifle\n  Termed mortality!\n\nTo invest existence with a stately air,\nNeeds but to remember\n  That the acorn there\nIs the egg of forests\n  For the upper air!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Life'S Trades.",
    "body": "It's such a little thing to weep,\n  So short a thing to sigh;\nAnd yet by trades the size of these\n  We men and women die!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ix.",
    "body": "Drowning is not so pitiful\n  As the attempt to rise.\nThree times, 't is said, a sinking man\n  Comes up to face the skies,\nAnd then declines forever\n  To that abhorred abode\nWhere hope and he part company, --\n  For he is grasped of God.\nThe Maker's cordial visage,\n  However good to see,\nIs shunned, we must admit it,\n  Like an adversity.\n\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\nHow still the bells in steeples stand,\n  Till, swollen with the sky,\nThey leap upon their silver feet\n  In frantic melody!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xi.",
    "body": "If the foolish call them 'flowers,'\n  Need the wiser tell?\nIf the savans 'classify' them,\n  It is just as well!\n\nThose who read the Revelations\n  Must not criticise\nThose who read the same edition\n  With beclouded eyes!\n\nCould we stand with that old Moses\n  Canaan denied, --\nScan, like him, the stately landscape\n  On the other side, --\n\nDoubtless we should deem superfluous\n  Many sciences\nNot pursued by learnèd angels\n  In scholastic skies!\n\nLow amid that glad _Belles lettres_\n  Grant that we may stand,\nStars, amid profound Galaxies,\n  At that grand 'Right hand'!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Syllable.",
    "body": "Could mortal lip divine\n  The undeveloped freight\nOf a delivered syllable,\n  'T would crumble with the weight.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Parting.",
    "body": "My life closed twice before its close;\n  It yet remains to see\nIf Immortality unveil\n  A third event to me,\n\nSo huge, so hopeless to conceive,\n  As these that twice befell.\nParting is all we know of heaven,\n  And all we need of hell.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aspiration.",
    "body": "We never know how high we are\n  Till we are called to rise;\nAnd then, if we are true to plan,\n  Our statures touch the skies.\n\nThe heroism we recite\n  Would be a daily thing,\nDid not ourselves the cubits warp\n  For fear to be a king.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Inevitable.",
    "body": "While I was fearing it, it came,\n  But came with less of fear,\nBecause that fearing it so long\n  Had almost made it dear.\nThere is a fitting a dismay,\n  A fitting a despair.\n'Tis harder knowing it is due,\n  Than knowing it is here.\nThe trying on the utmost,\n  The morning it is new,\nIs terribler than wearing it\n  A whole existence through.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Book.",
    "body": "There is no frigate like a book\n  To take us lands away,\nNor any coursers like a page\n  Of prancing poetry.\nThis traverse may the poorest take\n  Without oppress of toll;\nHow frugal is the chariot\n  That bears a human soul!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvii.",
    "body": "Who has not found the heaven below\n  Will fail of it above.\nGod's residence is next to mine,\n  His furniture is love.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Portrait.",
    "body": "A face devoid of love or grace,\n  A hateful, hard, successful face,\nA face with which a stone\n  Would feel as thoroughly at ease\nAs were they old acquaintances, --\n  First time together thrown.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Had A Guinea Golden.",
    "body": "I had a guinea golden;\n  I lost it in the sand,\nAnd though the sum was simple,\n  And pounds were in the land,\nStill had it such a value\n  Unto my frugal eye,\nThat when I could not find it\n  I sat me down to sigh.\n\nI had a crimson robin\n  Who sang full many a day,\nBut when the woods were painted\n  He, too, did fly away.\nTime brought me other robins, --\n  Their ballads were the same, --\nStill for my missing troubadour\n  I kept the 'house at hame.'\n\nI had a star in heaven;\n  One Pleiad was its name,\nAnd when I was not heeding\n  It wandered from the same.\nAnd though the skies are crowded,\n  And all the night ashine,\nI do not care about it,\n  Since none of them are mine.\n\nMy story has a moral:\n  I have a missing friend, --\nPleiad its name, and robin,\n  And guinea in the sand, --\nAnd when this mournful ditty,\n  Accompanied with tear,\nShall meet the eye of traitor\n  In country far from here,\nGrant that repentance solemn\n  May seize upon his mind,\nAnd he no consolation\n  Beneath the sun may find.\n\nNOTE. -- This poem may have had, like many others, a\npersonal origin. It is more than probable that it was\nsent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty\nreminder of letter-writing delinquencies.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Saturday Afternoon.",
    "body": "From all the jails the boys and girls\n  Ecstatically leap, --\nBeloved, only afternoon\n  That prison doesn't keep.\n\nThey storm the earth and stun the air,\n  A mob of solid bliss.\nAlas! that frowns could lie in wait\n  For such a foe as this!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxi.",
    "body": "Few get enough, -- enough is one;\n  To that ethereal throng\nHave not each one of us the right\n  To stealthily belong?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxii.",
    "body": "Upon the gallows hung a wretch,\n  Too sullied for the hell\nTo which the law entitled him.\n  As nature's curtain fell\nThe one who bore him tottered in,\n  For this was woman's son.\n''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped;\n  Oh, what a livid boon!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Lost Thought.",
    "body": "I felt a clearing in my mind\n  As if my brain had split;\nI tried to match it, seam by seam,\n  But could not make them fit.\n\nThe thought behind I strove to join\n  Unto the thought before,\nBut sequence ravelled out of reach\n  Like balls upon a floor.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Reticence.",
    "body": "The reticent volcano keeps\n  His never slumbering plan;\nConfided are his projects pink\n  To no precarious man.\n\nIf nature will not tell the tale\n  Jehovah told to her,\nCan human nature not survive\n  Without a listener?\n\nAdmonished by her buckled lips\n  Let every babbler be.\nThe only secret people keep\n  Is Immortality.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "With Flowers.",
    "body": "If recollecting were forgetting,\n  Then I remember not;\nAnd if forgetting, recollecting,\n  How near I had forgot!\nAnd if to miss were merry,\n  And if to mourn were gay,\nHow very blithe the fingers\n  That gathered these to-day!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxvi.",
    "body": "The farthest thunder that I heard\n  Was nearer than the sky,\nAnd rumbles still, though torrid noons\n  Have lain their missiles by.\nThe lightning that preceded it\n  Struck no one but myself,\nBut I would not exchange the bolt\n  For all the rest of life.\nIndebtedness to oxygen\n  The chemist may repay,\nBut not the obligation\n  To electricity.\nIt founds the homes and decks the days,\n  And every clamor bright\nIs but the gleam concomitant\n  Of that waylaying light.\nThe thought is quiet as a flake, --\n  A crash without a sound;\nHow life's reverberation\n  Its explanation found!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxvii.",
    "body": "On the bleakness of my lot\n  Bloom I strove to raise.\nLate, my acre of a rock\n  Yielded grape and maize.\n\nSoil of flint if steadfast tilled\n  Will reward the hand;\nSeed of palm by Lybian sun\n  Fructified in sand.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Contrast.",
    "body": "A door just opened on a street --\n  I, lost, was passing by --\nAn instant's width of warmth disclosed,\n  And wealth, and company.\n\nThe door as sudden shut, and I,\n  I, lost, was passing by, --\nLost doubly, but by contrast most,\n  Enlightening misery.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Friends.",
    "body": "Are friends delight or pain?\n  Could bounty but remain\nRiches were good.\n\nBut if they only stay\nBolder to fly away,\n  Riches are sad.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fire.",
    "body": "Ashes denote that fire was;\n  Respect the grayest pile\nFor the departed creature's sake\n  That hovered there awhile.\n\nFire exists the first in light,\n  And then consolidates, --\nOnly the chemist can disclose\n  Into what carbonates.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Man.",
    "body": "Fate slew him, but he did not drop;\n  She felled -- he did not fall --\nImpaled him on her fiercest stakes --\n  He neutralized them all.\n\nShe stung him, sapped his firm advance,\n  But, when her worst was done,\nAnd he, unmoved, regarded her,\n  Acknowledged him a man.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ventures.",
    "body": "Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.\n  For the one ship that struts the shore\nMany's the gallant, overwhelmed creature\n  Nodding in navies nevermore.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Griefs.",
    "body": "I measure every grief I meet\n  With analytic eyes;\nI wonder if it weighs like mine,\n  Or has an easier size.\n\nI wonder if they bore it long,\n  Or did it just begin?\nI could not tell the date of mine,\n  It feels so old a pain.\n\nI wonder if it hurts to live,\n  And if they have to try,\nAnd whether, could they choose between,\n  They would not rather die.\n\nI wonder if when years have piled --\n  Some thousands -- on the cause\nOf early hurt, if such a lapse\n  Could give them any pause;\n\nOr would they go on aching still\n  Through centuries above,\nEnlightened to a larger pain\n  By contrast with the love.\n\nThe grieved are many, I am told;\n  The reason deeper lies, --\nDeath is but one and comes but once,\n  And only nails the eyes.\n\nThere's grief of want, and grief of cold, --\n  A sort they call 'despair;'\nThere's banishment from native eyes,\n  In sight of native air.\n\nAnd though I may not guess the kind\n  Correctly, yet to me\nA piercing comfort it affords\n  In passing Calvary,\n\nTo note the fashions of the cross,\n  Of those that stand alone,\nStill fascinated to presume\n  That some are like my own.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxiv.",
    "body": "I have a king who does not speak;\nSo, wondering, thro' the hours meek\n  I trudge the day away,--\nHalf glad when it is night and sleep,\nIf, haply, thro' a dream to peep\n  In parlors shut by day.\n\nAnd if I do, when morning comes,\nIt is as if a hundred drums\n  Did round my pillow roll,\nAnd shouts fill all my childish sky,\nAnd bells keep saying 'victory'\n  From steeples in my soul!\n\nAnd if I don't, the little Bird\nWithin the Orchard is not heard,\n  And I omit to pray,\n'Father, thy will be done' to-day,\nFor my will goes the other way,\n  And it were perjury!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Disenchantment.",
    "body": "It dropped so low in my regard\n  I heard it hit the ground,\nAnd go to pieces on the stones\n  At bottom of my mind;\n\nYet blamed the fate that fractured, less\n  Than I reviled myself\nFor entertaining plated wares\n  Upon my silver shelf.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lost Faith.",
    "body": "To lose one's faith surpasses\n  The loss of an estate,\nBecause estates can be\n  Replenished, -- faith cannot.\n\nInherited with life,\n  Belief but once can be;\nAnnihilate a single clause,\n  And Being's beggary.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lost Joy.",
    "body": "I had a daily bliss\n  I half indifferent viewed,\nTill sudden I perceived it stir, --\n  It grew as I pursued,\n\nTill when, around a crag,\n  It wasted from my sight,\nEnlarged beyond my utmost scope,\n  I learned its sweetness right.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxviii.",
    "body": "I worked for chaff, and earning wheat\n  Was haughty and betrayed.\nWhat right had fields to arbitrate\n  In matters ratified?\n\nI tasted wheat, -- and hated chaff,\n  And thanked the ample friend;\nWisdom is more becoming viewed\n  At distance than at hand.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxix.",
    "body": "Life, and Death, and Giants\n  Such as these, are still.\nMinor apparatus, hopper of the mill,\nBeetle at the candle,\n  Or a fife's small fame,\nMaintain by accident\n  That they proclaim.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Alpine Glow.",
    "body": "Our lives are Swiss, --\n  So still, so cool,\n  Till, some odd afternoon,\nThe Alps neglect their curtains,\n  And we look farther on.\n\nItaly stands the other side,\n  While, like a guard between,\nThe solemn Alps,\nThe siren Alps,\n  Forever intervene!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Remembrance.",
    "body": "Remembrance has a rear and front, --\n  'T is something like a house;\nIt has a garret also\n  For refuse and the mouse,\n\nBesides, the deepest cellar\n  That ever mason hewed;\nLook to it, by its fathoms\n  Ourselves be not pursued.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlii.",
    "body": "To hang our head ostensibly,\n  And subsequent to find\nThat such was not the posture\n  Of our immortal mind,\n\nAffords the sly presumption\n  That, in so dense a fuzz,\nYou, too, take cobweb attitudes\n  Upon a plane of gauze!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Brain.",
    "body": "The brain is wider than the sky,\n  For, put them side by side,\nThe one the other will include\n  With ease, and you beside.\n\nThe brain is deeper than the sea,\n  For, hold them, blue to blue,\nThe one the other will absorb,\n  As sponges, buckets do.\n\nThe brain is just the weight of God,\n  For, lift them, pound for pound,\nAnd they will differ, if they do,\n  As syllable from sound.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xliv.",
    "body": "The bone that has no marrow;\n  What ultimate for that?\nIt is not fit for table,\n  For beggar, or for cat.\n\nA bone has obligations,\n  A being has the same;\nA marrowless assembly\n  Is culpabler than shame.\n\nBut how shall finished creatures\n  A function fresh obtain? --\nOld Nicodemus' phantom\n  Confronting us again!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Past.",
    "body": "The past is such a curious creature,\n  To look her in the face\nA transport may reward us,\n  Or a disgrace.\n\nUnarmed if any meet her,\n  I charge him, fly!\nHer rusty ammunition\n  Might yet reply!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlvi.",
    "body": "To help our bleaker parts\n  Salubrious hours are given,\nWhich if they do not fit for earth\n  Drill silently for heaven.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlvii.",
    "body": "What soft, cherubic creatures\n  These gentlewomen are!\nOne would as soon assault a plush\n  Or violate a star.\n\nSuch dimity convictions,\n  A horror so refined\nOf freckled human nature,\n  Of Deity ashamed, --\n\nIt's such a common glory,\n  A fisherman's degree!\nRedemption, brittle lady,\n  Be so, ashamed of thee.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Desire.",
    "body": "Who never wanted, -- maddest joy\n  Remains to him unknown:\nThe banquet of abstemiousness\n  Surpasses that of wine.\n\nWithin its hope, though yet ungrasped\n  Desire's perfect goal,\nNo nearer, lest reality\n  Should disenthrall thy soul.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Philosophy.",
    "body": "It might be easier\n  To fail with land in sight,\nThan gain my blue peninsula\n  To perish of delight.\n\n\n\n\n\nL.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Power.",
    "body": "You cannot put a fire out;\n  A thing that can ignite\nCan go, itself, without a fan\n  Upon the slowest night.\n\nYou cannot fold a flood\n  And put it in a drawer, --\nBecause the winds would find it out,\n  And tell your cedar floor.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Li.",
    "body": "A modest lot, a fame petite,\n  A brief campaign of sting and sweet\n  Is plenty! Is enough!\nA sailor's business is the shore,\n  A soldier's -- balls. Who asketh more\nMust seek the neighboring life!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lii.",
    "body": "Is bliss, then, such abyss\nI must not put my foot amiss\nFor fear I spoil my shoe?\n\nI'd rather suit my foot\nThan save my boot,\nFor yet to buy another pair\nIs possible\nAt any fair.\n\nBut bliss is sold just once;\nThe patent lost\nNone buy it any more.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Experience.",
    "body": "I stepped from plank to plank\n  So slow and cautiously;\nThe stars about my head I felt,\n  About my feet the sea.\n\nI knew not but the next\n  Would be my final inch, --\nThis gave me that precarious gait\n  Some call experience.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thanksgiving Day.",
    "body": "One day is there of the series\n  Termed Thanksgiving day,\nCelebrated part at table,\n  Part in memory.\n\nNeither patriarch nor pussy,\n  I dissect the play;\nSeems it, to my hooded thinking,\n  Reflex holiday.\n\nHad there been no sharp subtraction\n  From the early sum,\nNot an acre or a caption\n  Where was once a room,\n\nNot a mention, whose small pebble\n  Wrinkled any bay, --\nUnto such, were such assembly,\n  'T were Thanksgiving day.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Childish Griefs.",
    "body": "Softened by Time's consummate plush,\n  How sleek the woe appears\nThat threatened childhood's citadel\n  And undermined the years!\n\nBisected now by bleaker griefs,\n  We envy the despair\nThat devastated childhood's realm,\n  So easy to repair.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Consecration.",
    "body": "Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,\n  Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,\nProud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,\n  Not to partake thy passion, my humility.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Love'S Humility.",
    "body": "My worthiness is all my doubt,\n  His merit all my fear,\nContrasting which, my qualities\n  Do lowlier appear;\n\nLest I should insufficient prove\n  For his beloved need,\nThe chiefest apprehension\n  Within my loving creed.\n\nSo I, the undivine abode\n  Of his elect content,\nConform my soul as 't were a church\n  Unto her sacrament.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Love.",
    "body": "Love is anterior to life,\n  Posterior to death,\nInitial of creation, and\n  The exponent of breath.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Satisfied.",
    "body": "One blessing had I, than the rest\n  So larger to my eyes\nThat I stopped gauging, satisfied,\n  For this enchanted size.\n\nIt was the limit of my dream,\n  The focus of my prayer, --\nA perfect, paralyzing bliss\n  Contented as despair.\n\nI knew no more of want or cold,\n  Phantasms both become,\nFor this new value in the soul,\n  Supremest earthly sum.\n\nThe heaven below the heaven above\n  Obscured with ruddier hue.\nLife's latitude leant over-full;\n  The judgment perished, too.\n\nWhy joys so scantily disburse,\n  Why Paradise defer,\nWhy floods are served to us in bowls, --\n  I speculate no more.\n\n\n\n\n\nV.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "With A Flower.",
    "body": "When roses cease to bloom, dear,\n  And violets are done,\nWhen bumble-bees in solemn flight\n  Have passed beyond the sun,\n\nThe hand that paused to gather\n  Upon this summer's day\nWill idle lie, in Auburn, --\n  Then take my flower, pray!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song.",
    "body": "Summer for thee grant I may be\n  When summer days are flown!\nThy music still when whippoorwill\n  And oriole are done!\n\nFor thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb\n  And sow my blossoms o'er!\nPray gather me, Anemone,\n  Thy flower forevermore!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Loyalty.",
    "body": "Split the lark and you'll find the music,\n  Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled,\nScantily dealt to the summer morning,\n  Saved for your ear when lutes be old.\n\nLoose the flood, you shall find it patent,\n  Gush after gush, reserved for you;\nScarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas,\n  Now, do you doubt that your bird was true?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Viii.",
    "body": "To lose thee, sweeter than to gain\n  All other hearts I knew.\n'T is true the drought is destitute,\n  But then I had the dew!\n\nThe Caspian has its realms of sand,\n  Its other realm of sea;\nWithout the sterile perquisite\n  No Caspian could be.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ix.",
    "body": "  Poor little heart!\n  Did they forget thee?\nThen dinna care! Then dinna care!\n\n  Proud little heart!\n  Did they forsake thee?\nBe debonair! Be debonair!\n\n  Frail little heart!\n  I would not break thee:\nCould'st credit me? Could'st credit me?\n\n  Gay little heart!\n  Like morning glory\nThou'll wilted be; thou'll wilted be!\n\n\n\n\n\nX.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Forgotten.",
    "body": "There is a word\n  Which bears a sword\n  Can pierce an armed man.\nIt hurls its barbed syllables,--\n  At once is mute again.\nBut where it fell\nThe saved will tell\n  On patriotic day,\nSome epauletted brother\n  Gave his breath away.\n\nWherever runs the breathless sun,\n  Wherever roams the day,\nThere is its noiseless onset,\n  There is its victory!\n\nBehold the keenest marksman!\n  The most accomplished shot!\nTime's sublimest target\n  Is a soul 'forgot'!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xi.",
    "body": "I've got an arrow here;\n  Loving the hand that sent it,\nI the dart revere.\n\nFell, they will say, in 'skirmish'!\n  Vanquished, my soul will know,\nBy but a simple arrow\n  Sped by an archer's bow.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Master.",
    "body": "He fumbles at your spirit\n  As players at the keys\nBefore they drop full music on;\n  He stuns you by degrees,\n\nPrepares your brittle substance\n  For the ethereal blow,\nBy fainter hammers, further heard,\n  Then nearer, then so slow\n\nYour breath has time to straighten,\n  Your brain to bubble cool, --\nDeals one imperial thunderbolt\n  That scalps your naked soul.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xiii.",
    "body": "Heart, we will forget him!\n  You and I, to-night!\nYou may forget the warmth he gave,\n  I will forget the light.\n\nWhen you have done, pray tell me,\n  That I my thoughts may dim;\nHaste! lest while you're lagging,\n  I may remember him!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xiv.",
    "body": "Father, I bring thee not myself, --\n  That were the little load;\nI bring thee the imperial heart\n  I had not strength to hold.\n\nThe heart I cherished in my own\n  Till mine too heavy grew,\nYet strangest, heavier since it went,\n  Is it too large for you?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xv.",
    "body": "We outgrow love like other things\n  And put it in the drawer,\nTill it an antique fashion shows\n  Like costumes grandsires wore.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvi.",
    "body": "Not with a club the heart is broken,\n    Nor with a stone;\nA whip, so small you could not see it.\n    I've known\n\nTo lash the magic creature\n    Till it fell,\nYet that whip's name too noble\n    Then to tell.\n\nMagnanimous of bird\n    By boy descried,\nTo sing unto the stone\n    Of which it died.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Who?",
    "body": "My friend must be a bird,\n    Because it flies!\nMortal my friend must be,\n    Because it dies!\nBarbs has it, like a bee.\nAh, curious friend,\n    Thou puzzlest me!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xviii.",
    "body": "He touched me, so I live to know\nThat such a day, permitted so,\n  I groped upon his breast.\nIt was a boundless place to me,\nAnd silenced, as the awful sea\n  Puts minor streams to rest.\n\nAnd now, I'm different from before,\nAs if I breathed superior air,\n  Or brushed a royal gown;\nMy feet, too, that had wandered so,\nMy gypsy face transfigured now\n  To tenderer renown.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dreams.",
    "body": "Let me not mar that perfect dream\n  By an auroral stain,\nBut so adjust my daily night\n  That it will come again.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Numen Lumen.",
    "body": "I live with him, I see his face;\n  I go no more away\nFor visitor, or sundown;\n  Death's single privacy,\n\nThe only one forestalling mine,\n  And that by right that he\nPresents a claim invisible,\n  No wedlock granted me.\n\nI live with him, I hear his voice,\n  I stand alive to-day\nTo witness to the certainty\n  Of immortality\n\nTaught me by Time, -- the lower way,\n  Conviction every day, --\nThat life like this is endless,\n  Be judgment what it may.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Longing.",
    "body": "I envy seas whereon he rides,\n  I envy spokes of wheels\nOf chariots that him convey,\n  I envy speechless hills\n\nThat gaze upon his journey;\n  How easy all can see\nWhat is forbidden utterly\n  As heaven, unto me!\n\nI envy nests of sparrows\n  That dot his distant eaves,\nThe wealthy fly upon his pane,\n  The happy, happy leaves\n\nThat just abroad his window\n  Have summer's leave to be,\nThe earrings of Pizarro\n  Could not obtain for me.\n\nI envy light that wakes him,\n  And bells that boldly ring\nTo tell him it is noon abroad, --\n  Myself his noon could bring,\n\nYet interdict my blossom\n  And abrogate my bee,\nLest noon in everlasting night\n  Drop Gabriel and me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Wedded.",
    "body": "A solemn thing it was, I said,\n  A woman white to be,\nAnd wear, if God should count me fit,\n  Her hallowed mystery.\n\nA timid thing to drop a life\n  Into the purple well,\nToo plummetless that it come back\n  Eternity until.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Nature'S Changes.",
    "body": "The springtime's pallid landscape\n  Will glow like bright bouquet,\nThough drifted deep in parian\n  The village lies to-day.\n\nThe lilacs, bending many a year,\n  With purple load will hang;\nThe bees will not forget the tune\n  Their old forefathers sang.\n\nThe rose will redden in the bog,\n  The aster on the hill\nHer everlasting fashion set,\n  And covenant gentians frill,\n\nTill summer folds her miracle\n  As women do their gown,\nOr priests adjust the symbols\n  When sacrament is done.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Tulip.",
    "body": "She slept beneath a tree\n  Remembered but by me.\nI touched her cradle mute;\nShe recognized the foot,\nPut on her carmine suit, --\n  And see!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "A light exists in spring\n  Not present on the year\nAt any other period.\n  When March is scarcely here\n\nA color stands abroad\n  On solitary hills\nThat science cannot overtake,\n  But human nature feels.\n\nIt waits upon the lawn;\n  It shows the furthest tree\nUpon the furthest slope we know;\n  It almost speaks to me.\n\nThen, as horizons step,\n  Or noons report away,\nWithout the formula of sound,\n  It passes, and we stay:\n\nA quality of loss\n  Affecting our content,\nAs trade had suddenly encroached\n  Upon a sacrament.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Waking Year.",
    "body": "A lady red upon the hill\n  Her annual secret keeps;\nA lady white within the field\n  In placid lily sleeps!\n\nThe tidy breezes with their brooms\n  Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!\nPrithee, my pretty housewives!\n  Who may expected be?\n\nThe neighbors do not yet suspect!\n  The woods exchange a smile --\nOrchard, and buttercup, and bird --\n  In such a little while!\n\nAnd yet how still the landscape stands,\n  How nonchalant the wood,\nAs if the resurrection\n  Were nothing very odd!\n\n\n\n\n\nV.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "To March.",
    "body": "Dear March, come in!\nHow glad I am!\nI looked for you before.\nPut down your hat --\nYou must have walked --\nHow out of breath you are!\nDear March, how are you?\nAnd the rest?\nDid you leave Nature well?\nOh, March, come right upstairs with me,\nI have so much to tell!\n\nI got your letter, and the birds';\nThe maples never knew\nThat you were coming, -- I declare,\nHow red their faces grew!\nBut, March, forgive me --\nAnd all those hills\nYou left for me to hue;\nThere was no purple suitable,\nYou took it all with you.\n\nWho knocks? That April!\nLock the door!\nI will not be pursued!\nHe stayed away a year, to call\nWhen I am occupied.\nBut trifles look so trivial\nAs soon as you have come,\nThat blame is just as dear as praise\nAnd praise as mere as blame.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "March.",
    "body": "We like March, his shoes are purple,\n  He is new and high;\nMakes he mud for dog and peddler,\n  Makes he forest dry;\nKnows the adder's tongue his coming,\n  And begets her spot.\nStands the sun so close and mighty\n  That our minds are hot.\nNews is he of all the others;\n  Bold it were to die\nWith the blue-birds buccaneering\n  On his British sky.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dawn.",
    "body": "Not knowing when the dawn will come\n  I open every door;\nOr has it feathers like a bird,\n  Or billows like a shore?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Viii.",
    "body": "A murmur in the trees to note,\n  Not loud enough for wind;\nA star not far enough to seek,\n  Nor near enough to find;\n\nA long, long yellow on the lawn,\n  A hubbub as of feet;\nNot audible, as ours to us,\n  But dapperer, more sweet;\n\nA hurrying home of little men\n  To houses unperceived, --\nAll this, and more, if I should tell,\n  Would never be believed.\n\nOf robins in the trundle bed\n  How many I espy\nWhose nightgowns could not hide the wings,\n  Although I heard them try!\n\nBut then I promised ne'er to tell;\n  How could I break my word?\nSo go your way and I'll go mine, --\n  No fear you'll miss the road.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ix.",
    "body": "Morning is the place for dew,\n  Corn is made at noon,\nAfter dinner light for flowers,\n  Dukes for setting sun!\n\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\nTo my quick ear the leaves conferred;\n  The bushes they were bells;\nI could not find a privacy\n  From Nature's sentinels.\n\nIn cave if I presumed to hide,\n  The walls began to tell;\nCreation seemed a mighty crack\n  To make me visible.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Rose.",
    "body": "A sepal, petal, and a thorn\n  Upon a common summer's morn,\nA flash of dew, a bee or two,\nA breeze\nA caper in the trees, --\n  And I'm a rose!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xii.",
    "body": "High from the earth I heard a bird;\n  He trod upon the trees\nAs he esteemed them trifles,\n  And then he spied a breeze,\nAnd situated softly\n  Upon a pile of wind\nWhich in a perturbation\n  Nature had left behind.\nA joyous-going fellow\n  I gathered from his talk,\nWhich both of benediction\n  And badinage partook,\nWithout apparent burden,\n  I learned, in leafy wood\nHe was the faithful father\n  Of a dependent brood;\nAnd this untoward transport\n  His remedy for care, --\nA contrast to our respites.\n  How different we are!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cobwebs.",
    "body": "The spider as an artist\n  Has never been employed\nThough his surpassing merit\n  Is freely certified\n\nBy every broom and Bridget\n  Throughout a Christian land.\nNeglected son of genius,\n  I take thee by the hand.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Well.",
    "body": "What mystery pervades a well!\n  The water lives so far,\nLike neighbor from another world\n  Residing in a jar.\n\nThe grass does not appear afraid;\n  I often wonder he\nCan stand so close and look so bold\n  At what is dread to me.\n\nRelated somehow they may be, --\n  The sedge stands next the sea,\nWhere he is floorless, yet of fear\n  No evidence gives he.\n\nBut nature is a stranger yet;\n  The ones that cite her most\nHave never passed her haunted house,\n  Nor simplified her ghost.\n\nTo pity those that know her not\n  Is helped by the regret\nThat those who know her, know her less\n  The nearer her they get.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xv.",
    "body": "To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --\nOne clover, and a bee,\nAnd revery.\nThe revery alone will do\nIf bees are few.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Wind.",
    "body": "It's like the light, --\n  A fashionless delight\nIt's like the bee, --\n  A dateless melody.\n\nIt's like the woods,\n  Private like breeze,\nPhraseless, yet it stirs\n  The proudest trees.\n\nIt's like the morning, --\n  Best when it's done, --\nThe everlasting clocks\n  Chime noon.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvii.",
    "body": "A dew sufficed itself\n  And satisfied a leaf,\nAnd felt, 'how vast a destiny!\n  How trivial is life!'\n\nThe sun went out to work,\n  The day went out to play,\nBut not again that dew was seen\n  By physiognomy.\n\nWhether by day abducted,\n  Or emptied by the sun\nInto the sea, in passing,\n  Eternally unknown.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Woodpecker.",
    "body": "His bill an auger is,\n  His head, a cap and frill.\nHe laboreth at every tree, --\n  A worm his utmost goal.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Snake.",
    "body": "Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,\n  Until we meet a snake;\n'T is then we sigh for houses,\n  And our departure take\nAt that enthralling gallop\n  That only childhood knows.\nA snake is summer's treason,\n  And guile is where it goes.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xx.",
    "body": "Could I but ride indefinite,\n  As doth the meadow-bee,\nAnd visit only where I liked,\n  And no man visit me,\n\nAnd flirt all day with buttercups,\n  And marry whom I may,\nAnd dwell a little everywhere,\n  Or better, run away\n\nWith no police to follow,\n  Or chase me if I do,\nTill I should jump peninsulas\n  To get away from you, --\n\nI said, but just to be a bee\n  Upon a raft of air,\nAnd row in nowhere all day long,\n  And anchor off the bar,--\nWhat liberty! So captives deem\n  Who tight in dungeons are.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Moon.",
    "body": "The moon was but a chin of gold\n  A night or two ago,\nAnd now she turns her perfect face\n  Upon the world below.\n\nHer forehead is of amplest blond;\n  Her cheek like beryl stone;\nHer eye unto the summer dew\n  The likest I have known.\n\nHer lips of amber never part;\n  But what must be the smile\nUpon her friend she could bestow\n  Were such her silver will!\n\nAnd what a privilege to be\n  But the remotest star!\nFor certainly her way might pass\n  Beside your twinkling door.\n\nHer bonnet is the firmament,\n  The universe her shoe,\nThe stars the trinkets at her belt,\n  Her dimities of blue.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Bat.",
    "body": "The bat is dun with wrinkled wings\n  Like fallow article,\nAnd not a song pervades his lips,\n  Or none perceptible.\n\nHis small umbrella, quaintly halved,\n  Describing in the air\nAn arc alike inscrutable, --\n  Elate philosopher!\n\nDeputed from what firmament\n  Of what astute abode,\nEmpowered with what malevolence\n  Auspiciously withheld.\n\nTo his adroit Creator\n  Ascribe no less the praise;\nBeneficent, believe me,\n  His eccentricities.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Balloon.",
    "body": "You've seen balloons set, haven't you?\n  So stately they ascend\nIt is as swans discarded you\n  For duties diamond.\n\nTheir liquid feet go softly out\n  Upon a sea of blond;\nThey spurn the air as 't were too mean\n  For creatures so renowned.\n\nTheir ribbons just beyond the eye,\n  They struggle some for breath,\nAnd yet the crowd applauds below;\n  They would not encore death.\n\nThe gilded creature strains and spins,\n  Trips frantic in a tree,\nTears open her imperial veins\n  And tumbles in the sea.\n\nThe crowd retire with an oath\n  The dust in streets goes down,\nAnd clerks in counting-rooms observe,\n  ''T was only a balloon.'",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Evening.",
    "body": "The cricket sang,\nAnd set the sun,\nAnd workmen finished, one by one,\n  Their seam the day upon.\n\nThe low grass loaded with the dew,\nThe twilight stood as strangers do\nWith hat in hand, polite and new,\n  To stay as if, or go.\n\nA vastness, as a neighbor, came, --\nA wisdom without face or name,\nA peace, as hemispheres at home, --\n  And so the night became.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cocoon.",
    "body": "Drab habitation of whom?\nTabernacle or tomb,\nOr dome of worm,\nOr porch of gnome,\nOr some elf's catacomb?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sunset.",
    "body": "A sloop of amber slips away\n  Upon an ether sea,\nAnd wrecks in peace a purple tar,\n  The son of ecstasy.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aurora.",
    "body": "Of bronze and blaze\n  The north, to-night!\n  So adequate its forms,\nSo preconcerted with itself,\n  So distant to alarms, --\nAn unconcern so sovereign\n  To universe, or me,\nIt paints my simple spirit\n  With tints of majesty,\nTill I take vaster attitudes,\n  And strut upon my stem,\nDisdaining men and oxygen,\n  For arrogance of them.\n\nMy splendors are menagerie;\n  But their competeless show\nWill entertain the centuries\n  When I am, long ago,\nAn island in dishonored grass,\n  Whom none but daisies know.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Coming Of Night.",
    "body": "How the old mountains drip with sunset,\n  And the brake of dun!\nHow the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel\n  By the wizard sun!\n\nHow the old steeples hand the scarlet,\n  Till the ball is full, --\nHave I the lip of the flamingo\n  That I dare to tell?\n\nThen, how the fire ebbs like billows,\n  Touching all the grass\nWith a departing, sapphire feature,\n  As if a duchess pass!\n\nHow a small dusk crawls on the village\n  Till the houses blot;\nAnd the odd flambeaux no men carry\n  Glimmer on the spot!\n\nNow it is night in nest and kennel,\n  And where was the wood,\nJust a dome of abyss is nodding\n  Into solitude! --\n\nThese are the visions baffled Guido;\n  Titian never told;\nDomenichino dropped the pencil,\n  Powerless to unfold.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aftermath.",
    "body": "The murmuring of bees has ceased;\n  But murmuring of some\nPosterior, prophetic,\n  Has simultaneous come, --\n\nThe lower metres of the year,\n  When nature's laugh is done, --\nThe Revelations of the book\n  Whose Genesis is June.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iv. Time And Eternity.",
    "body": "I.\n\nThis world is not conclusion;\n  A sequel stands beyond,\nInvisible, as music,\n  But positive, as sound.\nIt beckons and it baffles;\n  Philosophies don't know,\nAnd through a riddle, at the last,\n  Sagacity must go.\nTo guess it puzzles scholars;\n  To gain it, men have shown\nContempt of generations,\n  And crucifixion known.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ii.",
    "body": "We learn in the retreating\n  How vast an one\nWas recently among us.\n  A perished sun\n\nEndears in the departure\n  How doubly more\nThan all the golden presence\n  It was before!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "They say that 'time assuages,' --\n  Time never did assuage;\nAn actual suffering strengthens,\n  As sinews do, with age.\n\nTime is a test of trouble,\n  But not a remedy.\nIf such it prove, it prove too\n  There was no malady.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iv.",
    "body": "We cover thee, sweet face.\n  Not that we tire of thee,\nBut that thyself fatigue of us;\n  Remember, as thou flee,\nWe follow thee until\n  Thou notice us no more,\nAnd then, reluctant, turn away\n  To con thee o'er and o'er,\nAnd blame the scanty love\n  We were content to show,\nAugmented, sweet, a hundred fold\n  If thou would'st take it now.\n\n\n\n\n\nV.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ending.",
    "body": "That is solemn we have ended, --\n  Be it but a play,\nOr a glee among the garrets,\n  Or a holiday,\n\nOr a leaving home; or later,\n  Parting with a world\nWe have understood, for better\n  Still it be unfurled.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vi.",
    "body": "The stimulus, beyond the grave\n  His countenance to see,\nSupports me like imperial drams\n  Afforded royally.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vii.",
    "body": "Given in marriage unto thee,\n  Oh, thou celestial host!\nBride of the Father and the Son,\n  Bride of the Holy Ghost!\n\nOther betrothal shall dissolve,\n  Wedlock of will decay;\nOnly the keeper of this seal\n  Conquers mortality.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Viii.",
    "body": "That such have died enables us\n  The tranquiller to die;\nThat such have lived, certificate\n  For immortality.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ix.",
    "body": "They won't frown always, -- some sweet day\n  When I forget to tease,\nThey'll recollect how cold I looked,\n  And how I just said 'please.'\n\nThen they will hasten to the door\n  To call the little child,\nWho cannot thank them, for the ice\n  That on her lisping piled.\n\n\n\n\n\nX.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Immortality.",
    "body": "It is an honorable thought,\n  And makes one lift one's hat,\nAs one encountered gentlefolk\n  Upon a daily street,\n\nThat we've immortal place,\n  Though pyramids decay,\nAnd kingdoms, like the orchard,\n  Flit russetly away.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xi.",
    "body": "The distance that the dead have gone\n  Does not at first appear;\nTheir coming back seems possible\n  For many an ardent year.\n\nAnd then, that we have followed them\n  We more than half suspect,\nSo intimate have we become\n  With their dear retrospect.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xii.",
    "body": "How dare the robins sing,\n  When men and women hear\nWho since they went to their account\n  Have settled with the year! --\nPaid all that life had earned\n  In one consummate bill,\nAnd now, what life or death can do\n  Is immaterial.\nInsulting is the sun\n  To him whose mortal light,\nBeguiled of immortality,\n  Bequeaths him to the night.\nIn deference to him\n  Extinct be every hum,\nWhose garden wrestles with the dew,\n  At daybreak overcome!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Death.",
    "body": "Death is like the insect\n  Menacing the tree,\nCompetent to kill it,\n  But decoyed may be.\n\nBait it with the balsam,\n  Seek it with the knife,\nBaffle, if it cost you\n  Everything in life.\n\nThen, if it have burrowed\n  Out of reach of skill,\nRing the tree and leave it, --\n  'T is the vermin's will.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Unwarned.",
    "body": "'T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou\n  No station in the day?\n'T was not thy wont to hinder so, --\n  Retrieve thine industry.\n\n'T is noon, my little maid, alas!\n  And art thou sleeping yet?\nThe lily waiting to be wed,\n  The bee, dost thou forget?\n\nMy little maid, 't is night; alas,\n  That night should be to thee\nInstead of morning! Hadst thou broached\n  Thy little plan to me,\nDissuade thee if I could not, sweet,\n  I might have aided thee.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xv.",
    "body": "Each that we lose takes part of us;\n  A crescent still abides,\nWhich like the moon, some turbid night,\n  Is summoned by the tides.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvi.",
    "body": "Not any higher stands the grave\n  For heroes than for men;\nNot any nearer for the child\n  Than numb three-score and ten.\n\nThis latest leisure equal lulls\n  The beggar and his queen;\nPropitiate this democrat\n  By summer's gracious mien.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Asleep.",
    "body": "As far from pity as complaint,\n  As cool to speech as stone,\nAs numb to revelation\n  As if my trade were bone.\n\nAs far from time as history,\n  As near yourself to-day\nAs children to the rainbow's scarf,\n  Or sunset's yellow play\n\nTo eyelids in the sepulchre.\n  How still the dancer lies,\nWhile color's revelations break,\n  And blaze the butterflies!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Spirit.",
    "body": "'T is whiter than an Indian pipe,\n  'T is dimmer than a lace;\nNo stature has it, like a fog,\n  When you approach the place.\n\nNot any voice denotes it here,\n  Or intimates it there;\nA spirit, how doth it accost?\n  What customs hath the air?\n\nThis limitless hyperbole\n  Each one of us shall be;\n'T is drama, if (hypothesis)\n  It be not tragedy!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Monument.",
    "body": "She laid her docile crescent down,\n  And this mechanic stone\nStill states, to dates that have forgot,\n  The news that she is gone.\n\nSo constant to its stolid trust,\n  The shaft that never knew,\nIt shames the constancy that fled\n  Before its emblem flew.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xx.",
    "body": "Bless God, he went as soldiers,\n  His musket on his breast;\nGrant, God, he charge the bravest\n  Of all the martial blest.\n\nPlease God, might I behold him\n  In epauletted white,\nI should not fear the foe then,\n  I should not fear the fight.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxi.",
    "body": "Immortal is an ample word\n  When what we need is by,\nBut when it leaves us for a time,\n  'T is a necessity.\n\nOf heaven above the firmest proof\n  We fundamental know,\nExcept for its marauding hand,\n  It had been heaven below.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxii.",
    "body": "Where every bird is bold to go,\n  And bees abashless play,\nThe foreigner before he knocks\n  Must thrust the tears away.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxiii.",
    "body": "The grave my little cottage is,\n  Where, keeping house for thee,\nI make my parlor orderly,\n  And lay the marble tea,\n\nFor two divided, briefly,\n  A cycle, it may be,\nTill everlasting life unite\n  In strong society.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxiv.",
    "body": "This was in the white of the year,\n  That was in the green,\nDrifts were as difficult then to think\n  As daisies now to be seen.\n\nLooking back is best that is left,\n  Or if it be before,\nRetrospection is prospect's half,\n  Sometimes almost more.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxv.",
    "body": "Sweet hours have perished here;\n  This is a mighty room;\nWithin its precincts hopes have played, --\n  Now shadows in the tomb.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxvi.",
    "body": "Me! Come! My dazzled face\nIn such a shining place!\n\nMe! Hear! My foreign ear\nThe sounds of welcome near!\n\nThe saints shall meet\nOur bashful feet.\n\nMy holiday shall be\nThat they remember me;\n\nMy paradise, the fame\nThat they pronounce my name.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Invisible.",
    "body": "From us she wandered now a year,\n  Her tarrying unknown;\nIf wilderness prevent her feet,\n  Or that ethereal zone\n\nNo eye hath seen and lived,\n  We ignorant must be.\nWe only know what time of year\n  We took the mystery.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxviii.",
    "body": "I wish I knew that woman's name,\n  So, when she comes this way,\nTo hold my life, and hold my ears,\n  For fear I hear her say\n\nShe's 'sorry I am dead,' again,\n  Just when the grave and I\nHave sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, --\n  Our only lullaby.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Trying To Forget.",
    "body": "Bereaved of all, I went abroad,\n  No less bereaved to be\nUpon a new peninsula, --\n  The grave preceded me,\n\nObtained my lodgings ere myself,\n  And when I sought my bed,\nThe grave it was, reposed upon\n  The pillow for my head.\n\nI waked, to find it first awake,\n  I rose, -- it followed me;\nI tried to drop it in the crowd,\n  To lose it in the sea,\n\nIn cups of artificial drowse\n  To sleep its shape away, --\nThe grave was finished, but the spade\n  Remained in memory.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxx.",
    "body": "I felt a funeral in my brain,\n  And mourners, to and fro,\nKept treading, treading, till it seemed\n  That sense was breaking through.\n\nAnd when they all were seated,\n  A service like a drum\nKept beating, beating, till I thought\n  My mind was going numb.\n\nAnd then I heard them lift a box,\n  And creak across my soul\nWith those same boots of lead, again.\n  Then space began to toll\n\nAs all the heavens were a bell,\n  And Being but an ear,\nAnd I and silence some strange race,\n  Wrecked, solitary, here.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxi.",
    "body": "I meant to find her when I came;\n  Death had the same design;\nBut the success was his, it seems,\n  And the discomfit mine.\n\nI meant to tell her how I longed\n  For just this single time;\nBut Death had told her so the first,\n  And she had hearkened him.\n\nTo wander now is my abode;\n  To rest, -- to rest would be\nA privilege of hurricane\n  To memory and me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Waiting.",
    "body": "I sing to use the waiting,\n  My bonnet but to tie,\nAnd shut the door unto my house;\n  No more to do have I,\n\nTill, his best step approaching,\n  We journey to the day,\nAnd tell each other how we sang\n  To keep the dark away.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxiii.",
    "body": "A sickness of this world it most occasions\n  When best men die;\nA wishfulness their far condition\n  To occupy.\n\nA chief indifference, as foreign\n  A world must be\nThemselves forsake contented,\n  For Deity.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxiv.",
    "body": "Superfluous were the sun\n  When excellence is dead;\nHe were superfluous every day,\n  For every day is said\n\nThat syllable whose faith\n  Just saves it from despair,\nAnd whose 'I'll meet you' hesitates\n  If love inquire, 'Where?'\n\nUpon his dateless fame\n  Our periods may lie,\nAs stars that drop anonymous\n  From an abundant sky.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxv.",
    "body": "So proud she was to die\n  It made us all ashamed\nThat what we cherished, so unknown\n  To her desire seemed.\n\nSo satisfied to go\n  Where none of us should be,\nImmediately, that anguish stooped\n  Almost to jealousy.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Farewell.",
    "body": "Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,\n  Then I am ready to go!\nJust a look at the horses --\n  Rapid! That will do!\n\nPut me in on the firmest side,\n  So I shall never fall;\nFor we must ride to the Judgment,\n  And it's partly down hill.\n\nBut never I mind the bridges,\n  And never I mind the sea;\nHeld fast in everlasting race\n  By my own choice and thee.\n\nGood-by to the life I used to live,\n  And the world I used to know;\nAnd kiss the hills for me, just once;\n  Now I am ready to go!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxvii.",
    "body": "The dying need but little, dear, --\n  A glass of water's all,\nA flower's unobtrusive face\n  To punctuate the wall,\n\nA fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,\n  And certainly that one\nNo color in the rainbow\n  Perceives when you are gone.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dead.",
    "body": "There's something quieter than sleep\n  Within this inner room!\nIt wears a sprig upon its breast,\n  And will not tell its name.\n\nSome touch it and some kiss it,\n  Some chafe its idle hand;\nIt has a simple gravity\n  I do not understand!\n\nWhile simple-hearted neighbors\n  Chat of the 'early dead,'\nWe, prone to periphrasis,\n  Remark that birds have fled!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxxix.",
    "body": "The soul should always stand ajar,\n  That if the heaven inquire,\nHe will not be obliged to wait,\n  Or shy of troubling her.\n\nDepart, before the host has slid\n  The bolt upon the door,\nTo seek for the accomplished guest, --\n  Her visitor no more.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xl.",
    "body": "Three weeks passed since I had seen her, --\n  Some disease had vexed;\n'T was with text and village singing\n  I beheld her next,\n\nAnd a company -- our pleasure\n  To discourse alone;\nGracious now to me as any,\n  Gracious unto none.\n\nBorne, without dissent of either,\n  To the parish night;\nOf the separated people\n  Which are out of sight?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xli.",
    "body": "I breathed enough to learn the trick,\n  And now, removed from air,\nI simulate the breath so well,\n  That one, to be quite sure\n\nThe lungs are stirless, must descend\n  Among the cunning cells,\nAnd touch the pantomime himself.\n  How cool the bellows feels!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlii.",
    "body": "I wonder if the sepulchre\n  Is not a lonesome way,\nWhen men and boys, and larks and June\n  Go down the fields to hay!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Joy In Death.",
    "body": "If tolling bell I ask the cause.\n  'A soul has gone to God,'\nI'm answered in a lonesome tone;\n  Is heaven then so sad?\n\nThat bells should joyful ring to tell\n  A soul had gone to heaven,\nWould seem to me the proper way\n  A good news should be given.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xliv.",
    "body": "If I may have it when it's dead\n  I will contented be;\nIf just as soon as breath is out\n  It shall belong to me,\n\nUntil they lock it in the grave,\n  'T is bliss I cannot weigh,\nFor though they lock thee in the grave,\n  Myself can hold the key.\n\nThink of it, lover! I and thee\n  Permitted face to face to be;\nAfter a life, a death we'll say, --\n  For death was that, and this is thee.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlv.",
    "body": "Before the ice is in the pools,\n  Before the skaters go,\nOr any cheek at nightfall\n  Is tarnished by the snow,\n\nBefore the fields have finished,\n  Before the Christmas tree,\nWonder upon wonder\n  Will arrive to me!\n\nWhat we touch the hems of\n  On a summer's day;\nWhat is only walking\n  Just a bridge away;\n\nThat which sings so, speaks so,\n  When there's no one here, --\nWill the frock I wept in\n  Answer me to wear?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dying.",
    "body": "I heard a fly buzz when I died;\n  The stillness round my form\nWas like the stillness in the air\n  Between the heaves of storm.\n\nThe eyes beside had wrung them dry,\n  And breaths were gathering sure\nFor that last onset, when the king\n  Be witnessed in his power.\n\nI willed my keepsakes, signed away\n  What portion of me I\nCould make assignable, -- and then\n  There interposed a fly,\n\nWith blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,\n  Between the light and me;\nAnd then the windows failed, and then\n  I could not see to see.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlvii.",
    "body": "Adrift! A little boat adrift!\n  And night is coming down!\nWill no one guide a little boat\n  Unto the nearest town?\n\nSo sailors say, on yesterday,\n  Just as the dusk was brown,\nOne little boat gave up its strife,\n  And gurgled down and down.\n\nBut angels say, on yesterday,\n  Just as the dawn was red,\nOne little boat o'erspent with gales\nRetrimmed its masts, redecked its sails\n  Exultant, onward sped!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlviii.",
    "body": "There's been a death in the opposite house\n  As lately as to-day.\nI know it by the numb look\n  Such houses have alway.\n\nThe neighbors rustle in and out,\n  The doctor drives away.\nA window opens like a pod,\n  Abrupt, mechanically;\n\nSomebody flings a mattress out, --\n  The children hurry by;\nThey wonder if It died on that, --\n  I used to when a boy.\n\nThe minister goes stiffly in\n  As if the house were his,\nAnd he owned all the mourners now,\n  And little boys besides;\n\nAnd then the milliner, and the man\n  Of the appalling trade,\nTo take the measure of the house.\n  There'll be that dark parade\n\nOf tassels and of coaches soon;\n  It's easy as a sign, --\nThe intuition of the news\n  In just a country town.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xlix.",
    "body": "We never know we go, -- when we are going\n  We jest and shut the door;\nFate following behind us bolts it,\n  And we accost no more.\n\n\n\n\nL.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Soul'S Storm.",
    "body": "It struck me every day\n  The lightning was as new\nAs if the cloud that instant slit\n  And let the fire through.\n\nIt burned me in the night,\n  It blistered in my dream;\nIt sickened fresh upon my sight\n  With every morning's beam.\n\nI thought that storm was brief, --\n  The maddest, quickest by;\nBut Nature lost the date of this,\n  And left it in the sky.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Li.",
    "body": "Water is taught by thirst;\nLand, by the oceans passed;\n  Transport, by throe;\nPeace, by its battles told;\nLove, by memorial mould;\n  Birds, by the snow.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thirst.",
    "body": "We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act;\n  And later, when we die,\nA little water supplicate\n  Of fingers going by.\n\nIt intimates the finer want,\n  Whose adequate supply\nIs that great water in the west\n  Termed immortality.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Liii.",
    "body": "A clock stopped -- not the mantel's;\n  Geneva's farthest skill\nCan't put the puppet bowing\n  That just now dangled still.\n\nAn awe came on the trinket!\n  The figures hunched with pain,\nThen quivered out of decimals\n  Into degreeless noon.\n\nIt will not stir for doctors,\n  This pendulum of snow;\nThe shopman importunes it,\n  While cool, concernless No\n\nNods from the gilded pointers,\n  Nods from the seconds slim,\nDecades of arrogance between\n  The dial life and him.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Charlotte Brontë'S Grave.",
    "body": "All overgrown by cunning moss,\n  All interspersed with weed,\nThe little cage of 'Currer Bell,'\n  In quiet Haworth laid.\n\nThis bird, observing others,\n  When frosts too sharp became,\nRetire to other latitudes,\n  Quietly did the same,\n\nBut differed in returning;\n  Since Yorkshire hills are green,\nYet not in all the nests I meet\n  Can nightingale be seen.\n\nGathered from many wanderings,\n  Gethsemane can tell\nThrough what transporting anguish\n  She reached the asphodel!\n\nSoft fall the sounds of Eden\n  Upon her puzzled ear;\nOh, what an afternoon for heaven,\n  When 'Brontë' entered there!",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lv.",
    "body": "A toad can die of light!\nDeath is the common right\n  Of toads and men, --\nOf earl and midge\nThe privilege.\n  Why swagger then?\nThe gnat's supremacy\nIs large as thine.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lvi.",
    "body": "Far from love the Heavenly Father\n  Leads the chosen child;\nOftener through realm of briar\n  Than the meadow mild,\n\nOftener by the claw of dragon\n  Than the hand of friend,\nGuides the little one predestined\n  To the native land.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sleeping.",
    "body": "A long, long sleep, a famous sleep\n  That makes no show for dawn\nBy stretch of limb or stir of lid, --\n  An independent one.\n\nWas ever idleness like this?\n  Within a hut of stone\nTo bask the centuries away\n  Nor once look up for noon?",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Retrospect.",
    "body": "'T was just this time last year I died.\n  I know I heard the corn,\nWhen I was carried by the farms, --\n  It had the tassels on.\n\nI thought how yellow it would look\n  When Richard went to mill;\nAnd then I wanted to get out,\n  But something held my will.\n\nI thought just how red apples wedged\n  The stubble's joints between;\nAnd carts went stooping round the fields\n  To take the pumpkins in.\n\nI wondered which would miss me least,\n  And when Thanksgiving came,\nIf father'd multiply the plates\n  To make an even sum.\n\nAnd if my stocking hung too high,\n  Would it blur the Christmas glee,\nThat not a Santa Claus could reach\n  The altitude of me?\n\nBut this sort grieved myself, and so\n  I thought how it would be\nWhen just this time, some perfect year,\n  Themselves should come to me.",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  },
  {
    "title": "Eternity.",
    "body": "On this wondrous sea,\nSailing silently,\n  Ho! pilot, ho!\nKnowest thou the shore\nWhere no breakers roar,\n  Where the storm is o'er?\n\nIn the silent west\nMany sails at rest,\n  Their anchors fast;\nThither I pilot thee, --\nLand, ho! Eternity!\n  Ashore at last!\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of Project Gutenberg's Poems: Three Series, Complete, by Emily Dickinson",
    "author": "Emily Dickinson",
    "source": "Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series",
    "period": "1890–1896"
  }
]