The Poetry of Emily Dickinson


	The Poetry of Emily Dickinson some of Jalynka's favorites

Index of first lines:

"It's all I have to bring to-day,"

"For each ecstatic instant"

"I taste a liquor never brewed"

"God permits industrious angels"

"I held a jewel in my fingers"

"Hope is the thing with feathers"

"I'm nobody! Who are you?"

"He fumbles at your spirit"

"We play at paste"

"Not in this world to see his face"

"This is my letter to the world"

"Going to him! Happy letter! Tell him--"

"If you were coming in the fall,"

"I found the phrase to every thought"

"I cannot live with you,"

"Of all the souls that stand create"

"She rose to his requirement, dropped"

"I stepped from plank to plank"

"If I can stop one heart from breaking"

"I felt a cleaving in my mind"

"Nature rarer uses yellow"

"I never saw a moor"

"There is no frigate like a book"

"My life closed twice before its close;"

Note: These poems were selected from Dover Thrift Edition's Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems, c. 1990.

It's all I have to bring to-day,
   This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
   And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, --
   Some one the sum could tell, --
This, and my heart, and all the bees
   Which in the clover dwell.

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauche of dew,
Reeling through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

God permits industrious angels
Afternoons to play.
I met one, -- forgot my school-mates,
All, for him, straightway.

God calls home the angels promptly
At the setting sun;
I missed mine. How dreary marbles,
After playing Crown!

I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: " 'T will keep."

I woke and chid my honest fingers, --
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remeberance
Is all I own.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest seas;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Go back to Jalynka's Home Go back to the Poetry Page

Get your free home page!