Poems of Emily Dickinson, series 2 | Page 4

later ones, everything by way of punctuation was
discarded, except numerous dashes; and all important words began with
capitals. The effect of a page of her more recent manuscript is
exceedingly quaint and strong. The fac-simile given in the present
volume is from one of the earlier transition periods. Although there is
nowhere a date, the handwriting makes it possible to arrange the poems
with general chronologic accuracy.
As a rule, the verses were without titles; but "A Country Burial," "A

Thunder-Storm," "The Humming-Bird," and a few others were named
by their author, frequently at the end,--sometimes only in the
accompanying note, if sent to a friend.
The variation of readings, with the fact that she often wrote in pencil
and not always clearly, have at times thrown a good deal of
responsibility upon her Editors. But all interference not
absolutely
inevitable has been avoided. The very roughness of her rendering is
part of herself, and not lightly to be touched; for it seems in many cases
that she intentionally avoided the smoother and more usual rhymes.
Like impressionist pictures, or Wagner's rugged music, the very
absence of conventional form challenges attention. In Emily
Dickinson's exacting hands, the especial, intrinsic fitness of a particular
order of words might not be sacrificed to anything virtually extrinsic;
and her verses all show a strange cadence of inner rhythmical music.
Lines are always daringly constructed, and the "thought-rhyme"
appears frequently,--appealing, indeed, to an unrecognized sense more
elusive than hearing.
Emily Dickinson scrutinized everything with clear-eyed frankness.
Every subject was proper ground for legitimate study, even the sombre
facts of death and burial, and the unknown life beyond. She touches
these themes sometimes lightly, sometimes almost
humorously, more
often with weird and peculiar power; but she is never by any chance
frivolous or trivial. And while, as one critic has said, she may exhibit
toward God "an Emersonian self-possession," it was because she
looked upon all life with a candor as unprejudiced as it is rare.
She had tried society and the world, and found them lacking. She was
not an invalid, and she lived in seclusion from no

love-disappointment. Her life was the normal blossoming of a nature
introspective to a high degree, whose best thought could not exist in
pretence.
Storm, wind, the wild March sky, sunsets and dawns; the birds and
bees, butterflies and flowers of her garden, with a few trusted human

friends, were sufficient companionship. The coming of the first robin
was a jubilee beyond crowning of monarch or birthday of pope; the
first red leaf hurrying through "the altered air," an epoch. Immortality
was close about her; and while never morbid or melancholy, she lived
in its presence.
MABEL LOOMIS TODD.
AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS,
August, I891.
My nosegays are for captives;
Dim, long-expectant eyes,
Fingers denied the plucking,
Patient till paradise,
To such, if they should whisper
Of morning and the moor,
They bear no other errand,
And I, no other prayer.
I.
LIFE.
I.
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there 's a
pair of us -- don't tell!
They 'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your
name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
II.

I bring an unaccustomed wine
To lips long parching, next to mine,

And summon them to drink.
Crackling with fever, they essay;
I turn my brimming eyes away,

And come next hour to look.
The hands still hug the tardy glass;
The lips I would have cooled, alas!

Are so superfluous cold,
I would as soon attempt to warm
The bosoms where the frost has lain

Ages beneath the mould.
Some other thirsty there may be
To whom this would have pointed
me
Had it remained to speak.
And so I always bear the cup
If, haply, mine may be the drop
Some
pilgrim thirst to slake, --
If, haply, any say to me,
"Unto the little, unto me,"
When I at last
awake.
III.
The nearest dream recedes, unrealized.
The heaven we chase
Like the June bee
Before the school-boy

Invites the race;
Stoops to an easy clover --
Dips -- evades -- teases
-- deploys;
Then to the royal clouds
Lifts his light pinnace
Heedless of the boy

Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.
Homesick for steadfast honey,
Ah! the bee flies not
That brews that
rare variety.
IV.

We play at paste,
Till qualified for pearl,
Then drop the paste,

And deem ourself a fool.
The shapes, though, were similar,
And our
new hands
Learned gem-tactics
Practising sands.
V.
I found the phrase to every thought
I ever had, but one;
And that
defies me, -- as a hand
Did try to chalk the sun
To races nurtured in the dark; --
How would your own begin?
Can
blaze be done in cochineal,
Or noon in mazarin?
VI.
HOPE.
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