Emily Dickinson Flashcards
Surgeons must be very careful
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit — Life!
Emily Dickinson
Exultation is the going
Exultation is the going Of an inland soul to sea, —
Past the houses, past the headlands, Into deep eternity!
Bred as we, among the mountains, Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication Of the first league out from land?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you — Nobody — too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise — you know.
How dreary — to be — Somebody!
How public — like a Frog —
To tell one’s name — the livelong June — To an admiring Bog!
I had no time to Hate
I had no time to Hate — Because The Grave would hinder Me — And Life was not so Ample I Could finish — Enmity —
Nor had I time to Love — But since Some Industry must be — The little Toil of Love — I thought Be large enough for Me —
Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
Nor with a Stone — A Whip so small you could not see it I’ve known To lash the Magic Creature Till it fell,
Yet that Whip’s Name Too noble then to tell. Magnanimous as Bird By Boy descried — Singing unto the Stone Of which it died — Shame need not crouch In such an Earth as Ours — Shame — stand erect — The Universe is yours.
If recollecting were forgetting
If recollecting were forgetting,
Then I remember not.
And if forgetting, recollecting,
How near I had forgot,
And if to miss, were merry,
And to mourn, were gay,
How very blithe the fingers
That gathered this, Today!
Emily Dickinson
A BOOK
He ate and drank the precious words, His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings Was but a book.
What liberty A loosened spirit brings!
The Brain
The brain within its groove
Runs evenly and true;
But let a splinter swerve,
’Twere easier for you
To put the water back
When floods have slit the hills,
And scooped a turnpike
for themselves,
And blotted out the mills!
LOVE’S BAPTISM
I’m ceded, I’ve stopped being theirs;
The name they dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church, Is finished using now,
And they can put it with my dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools I’ve finished threading too.
Baptized before without the choice,
But this time consciously, of grace Unto supremest name,
Called to my full, the crescent dropped, Existence’s whole arc filled up With one small diadem.
My second rank, too small the first,
Crowned, crowing on my father’s breast, A half unconscious queen;
But this time, adequate, erect,
With will to choose or to reject.
And I choose—just a throne.
A SERVICE OF SONG
Some keep the Sabbath going to church; I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister, And an orchard for a dome.
Some keep the Sabbath in surplice; I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church, Our little sexton sings.
God preaches,—a noted clergyman,— And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last, I’m going all along!
