Journey 2 Being

(39)

I CAN’T tell you, but you feel it—
Nor can you tell me,
Saints with vanished slate and pencil
Solve our April day.


Sweeter than a vanished Frolic
From a vanished Green!
Swifter than the hoofs of Horseman
Round a ledge of Dream!


Modest, let us walk among it.
With our “faces veiled”,
As they say polite Archangels
Do, in meeting God.
Not for me to prate about it,


Not for you to say
To some fashionable Lady—
“Charming April Day!”


Rather Heaven’s “Peter Parley”
By which, Children—slow—
To sublimer recitations
Are prepared to go!

-Emily Dickinson

(38)

A LITTLE madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown,
Who ponders this tremendous scene—
This whole experiment of green,
As if it were his own!

-Emily Dickinson

(37)

“MORNING” means “Milking” to the Farmer
Dawn to the Apennines—
Dice to the Maid.
“Morning” means just Chance to the Lover—
Just Revelation to the Beloved.
Epicures date a breakfast by it!
Heroes a battle,
The Miller a flood,
Faint-going eyes their lapse
From sighing,
Faith, the Experiment of our Lord!

-Emily Dickinson

(36)

SHE died at play,
Gambolled away
Her lease of spotted hours,
Then sank as gaily as a Turk
Upon a couch of flowers.
Her ghost strolled softly o’er the hill
Yesterday and today,
Her vestments as the silver fleece,
Her countenance as spray.

-Emily Dickinson

(35)

AH, Teneriffe!
       Retreating Mountain!
Purples of Ages pause for you,
Sunset reviews her Sapphire Regiment,
Day drops you her red Adieu!


Still, clad in your mail of ices,
Thigh of granite and thew of steel—
Heedless, alike, of pomp or parting,
Ah, Teneriffe!
       I ’m kneeling still.

-Emily Dickinson

(34)

NATURE is what we see,
The Hill, the Afternoon—
Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumble-bee,
Nay—Nature is Heaven.


Nature is what we hear,
The Bobolink, the Sea—
Thunder, the Cricket—
Nay,—Nature is Harmony.


Nature is what we know
But have no art to say,
So impotent our wisdom is
To Her simplicity.

-Emily Dickinson

(33)

THE Soul’s superior instants
Occur to Her alone,
When friend and earth’s occasion
Have infinite withdrawn.


Or she, Herself, ascended
To too remote a height,
For lower recognition
Than Her Omnipotent.


This mortal abolition
Is seldom, but as fair
As Apparition—subject
To autocratic air.


Eternity’s disclosure
To favorites, a few,
Of the Colossal substance
Of immortality.

-Emily Dickinson

(32)

TWO lengths has every day,
Its absolute extent—
And area superior
By hope or heaven lent.
Eternity will be
Velocity, or pause,
At fundamental signals
From fundamental laws.
To die, is not to go—
On doom’s consummate chart
No territory new is staked,
Remain thou as thou art.

-Emily Dickinson

(31)

THE future never spoke,
Nor will he, like the Dumb,
Reveal by sign or syllable
Of his profound To-come.
But when the news be ripe,
Presents it in the Act—
Forestalling preparation
Escape or substitute.
Indifferent to him
The Dower as the Doom,
His office but to execute
Fate’s Telegram to him.

-Emily Dickinson

(30)

I BET with every Wind that blew, till Nature in chagrin
Employed a Fact to visit me and scuttle my Balloon!

-Emily Dickinson