Poems by Emily Dickinson, Third Series

XLI

I breathed enough to learn the trick,  And now, removed from air,I simulate the breath so well,  That one, to be quite sureThe lungs are stirless, must descend  Among the cunning cells,And touch the pantomime himself.  How cool the bellows feels!

XLII

I wonder if the sepulchre  Is not a lonesome way,When men and boys, and larks and June  Go down the fields to hay!

XLIII.

JOY IN DEATH

If tolling bell I ask the cause.  'A soul has gone to God,'I'm answered in a lonesome tone;  Is heaven then so sad?That bells should joyful ring to tell  A soul had gone to heaven,Would seem to me the proper way  A good news should be given.

XLIV

If I may have it when it's dead  I will contented be;If just as soon as breath is out  It shall belong to me,Until they lock it in the grave,  'T is bliss I cannot weigh,For though they lock thee in the grave,  Myself can hold the key.Think of it, lover! I and thee  Permitted face to face to be;After a life, a death we'll say, —  For death was that, and this is thee.

XLV

Before the ice is in the pools,  Before the skaters go,Or any cheek at nightfall  Is tarnished by the snow,Before the fields have finished,  Before the Christmas tree,Wonder upon wonder  Will arrive to me!What we touch the hems of  On a summer's day;What is only walking  Just a bridge away;That which sings so, speaks so,  When there's no one here, —Will the frock I wept in  Answer me to wear?

XLVI.

DYING

I heard a fly buzz when I died;  The stillness round my formWas like the stillness in the air  Between the heaves of storm.The eyes beside had wrung them dry,  And breaths were gathering sureFor that last onset, when the king  Be witnessed in his power.I willed my keepsakes, signed away  What portion of me ICould make assignable, – and then  There interposed a fly,With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,  Between the light and me;And then the windows failed, and then  I could not see to see.

XLVII

Adrift! A little boat adrift!  And night is coming down!Will no one guide a little boat  Unto the nearest town?So sailors say, on yesterday,  Just as the dusk was brown,One little boat gave up its strife,  And gurgled down and down.But angels say, on yesterday,  Just as the dawn was red,One little boat o'erspent with galesRetrimmed its masts, redecked its sails  Exultant, onward sped!

XLVIII

There's been a death in the opposite house  As lately as to-day.I know it by the numb look  Such houses have alway.The neighbors rustle in and out,  The doctor drives away.A window opens like a pod,  Abrupt, mechanically;Somebody flings a mattress out, —  The children hurry by;They wonder if It died on that, —  I used to when a boy.The minister goes stiffly in  As if the house were his,And he owned all the mourners now,  And little boys besides;And then the milliner, and the man  Of the appalling trade,To take the measure of the house.  There'll be that dark paradeOf tassels and of coaches soon;  It's easy as a sign, —The intuition of the news  In just a country town.

XLIX

We never know we go, – when we are going  We jest and shut the door;Fate following behind us bolts it,  And we accost no more.

L.

THE SOUL'S STORM

It struck me every day  The lightning was as newAs if the cloud that instant slit  And let the fire through.It burned me in the night,  It blistered in my dream;It sickened fresh upon my sight  With every morning's beam.I thought that storm was brief, —  The maddest, quickest by;But Nature lost the date of this,  And left it in the sky.

LI

Water is taught by thirst;Land, by the oceans passed;  Transport, by throe;Peace, by its battles told;Love, by memorial mould;  Birds, by the snow.

LII.

THIRST

We thirst at first, – 't is Nature's act;  And later, when we die,A little water supplicate  Of fingers going by.It intimates the finer want,  Whose adequate supplyIs that great water in the west  Termed immortality.

LIII

A clock stopped – not the mantel's;  Geneva's farthest skillCan't put the puppet bowing  That just now dangled still.An awe came on the trinket!  The figures hunched with pain,Then quivered out of decimals  Into degreeless noon.It will not stir for doctors,  This pendulum of snow;The shopman importunes it,  While cool, concernless NoNods from the gilded pointers,  Nods from the seconds slim,Decades of arrogance between  The dial life and him.

LIV.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S GRAVE

All overgrown by cunning moss,  All interspersed with weed,The little cage of 'Currer Bell,'  In quiet Haworth laid.This bird, observing others,  When frosts too sharp became,Retire to other latitudes,  Quietly did the same,But differed in returning;  Since Yorkshire hills are green,Yet not in all the nests I meet  Can nightingale be seen.Gathered from many wanderings,  Gethsemane can tellThrough what transporting anguish  She reached the asphodel!Soft fall the sounds of Eden  Upon her puzzled ear;Oh, what an afternoon for heaven,  When 'Brontë' entered there!

LV

A toad can die of light!Death is the common right  Of toads and men, —Of earl and midgeThe privilege.  Why swagger then?The gnat's supremacyIs large as thine.

LVI

Far from love the Heavenly Father  Leads the chosen child;Oftener through realm of briar  Than the meadow mild,Oftener by the claw of dragon  Than the hand of friend,Guides the little one predestined  To the native land.

LVII.

SLEEPING

A long, long sleep, a famous sleep  That makes no show for dawnBy stretch of limb or stir of lid, —  An independent one.Was ever idleness like this?  Within a hut of stoneTo bask the centuries away  Nor once look up for noon?

LVIII.

RETROSPECT

'T was just this time last year I died.  I know I heard the corn,When I was carried by the farms, —  It had the tassels on.I thought how yellow it would look  When Richard went to mill;And then I wanted to get out,  But something held my will.I thought just how red apples wedged  The stubble's joints between;And carts went stooping round the fields  To take the pumpkins in.I wondered which would miss me least,  And when Thanksgiving came,If father'd multiply the plates  To make an even sum.And if my stocking hung too high,  Would it blur the Christmas glee,That not a Santa Claus could reach  The altitude of me?But this sort grieved myself, and so  I thought how it would beWhen just this time, some perfect year,  Themselves should come to me.

LIX.

ETERNITY

On this wondrous sea,Sailing silently,  Ho! pilot, ho!Knowest thou the shoreWhere no breakers roar,  Where the storm is o'er?In the silent westMany sails at rest,  Their anchors fast;Thither I pilot thee, —Land, ho! Eternity!  Ashore at last!

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