Though to trust us seem to us
More respectful—“we are dust.”274
We apologize to Thee
For Thine own Duplicity.

CIII

THE sweets of Pillage can be known
To no one but the Thief,
Compassion for Integrity
Is his divinest Grief.

CIV

THE Bible is an antique volume
Written by faded men,
At the suggestion of Holy Spectres—275
Subjects—Bethlehem—
Eden—the ancient Homestead—
Satan—the Brigadier,
Judas—the great Defaulter,
David—the Troubadour.
Sin—a distinguished Precipice
Others must resist,
Boys that “believe”
Are very lonesome—
Other boys are “lost.”
Had but the tale a warbling Teller
All the boys would come—
Orpheus’ 276 sermon captivated,
It did not condemn.

CV

A little over Jordan,
As Genesis record,
An Angel and a Wrestler
Did wrestle long and hard. 277

Till, morning touching mountain,
And Jacob waxing strong,
The Angel begged permission
To breakfast and return.

“Not so,” quoth wily Jacob,
And girt his loins anew,
“Until thou bless me, stranger!”
The which acceded to:

Light swung the silver fleeces
Peniel278 hills among,
And the astonished Wrestler
Found he had worsted God!

CVI

DUST is the only secret,
Death the only one
You cannot find out all about
In his native town:
Nobody knew his father,
Never was a boy,
Hadn’t any playmates
Or early history.

Industrious, laconic,
Punctual, sedate,
Bolder than a Brigand,279
Swifter than a Fleet,
Builds like a bird too,
Christ robs the next—
Robin after robin
Smuggled to rest!

CVII

AMBITION cannot find him,
Affection doesn’t know
How many leagues of Nowhere
Lie between them now.
Yesterday undistinguished—
Eminent to-day,
For our mutual honor-
Immortality!

CVIII

EDEN is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day,
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.
How fair, on looking back, the Day
We sauntered from the door,
Unconscious our returning
Discover it no more.

CIX

CANDOR, my tepid Friend,
Come not to play with me!
The Myrrhs and Mochas280 of the Mind
Are its Iniquity.

CX

SPEECH is a symptom of affection,
And Silence one,
The perfectest communication
Is heard of none—
Exists and its endorsement
Is had within—
Behold! said the Apostle,
Yet had not seen.

CXI

WHO were “the Father and the Son”—
We pondered when a child,
And what had they to do with us—
And when portentous told
With inference appalling,
By Childhood fortified,
We thought, “at least they are no worse
Than they have been described.”

Who are “the Father and the Son”—
Did we demand today,
“The Father and the Son” himself
Would doubtless specify,
But had they the felicity
When we desired to know,
We better Friends had been, perhaps,
Than time ensue to be.

We start, to learn that we believe
But once, entirely—
Belief, it does not fit so well
When altered frequently.
We blush, that Heaven if we achieve,
Event ineffable—
We shall have shunned, until ashamed
To own the Miracle.

CXII

THAT Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough, the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove.

CXIII

THE luxury to apprehend
The luxury ’t would be
To look at thee a single time,
An Epicure of me,

In whatsoever Presence, makes,
Till, for a further food
I scarcely recollect to starve,
So first am I supplied.

The luxury to meditate
The luxury it was
To banquet on thy Countenance,
A sumptuousness bestows

On plainer days,
Whose table, far as
Certainty can see,
Is laden with a single crumb—
The consciousness of Thee.

CXIV

THE Sea said “Come” to the Brook,
The Brook said “Let me grow!”
The Sea said “Then you will be a Sea—
I want a brook, Come now!”

CXV

ALL I may, if small,
Do it not display
Larger for its Totalness?
’T is economy
To bestow a world
And withhold a star,
Utmost is munificence;
Less, though larger, Poor.

CXVI

LOVE reckons by itself alone,
“As large as I” relate the Sun
To one who never felt it blaze,
Itself is all the like it has.

CXVII

THE inundation of the Spring
Submerges every soul,
It sweeps the tenement away
But leaves the water whole.
In which the Soul, at first alarmed,
Seeks furtive for its shore,
But acclimated, gropes no more
For that Peninsular.

CXVIII

NO Autumn’s intercepting chill
Appalls this Tropic Breast,
But African exuberance
And Asiatic Rest.

CXIX

VOLCANOES be in Sicily
And South America,
I judge from my geography.
Volcanoes nearer here,
A lava step, at any time,
Am I inclined to climb,
A crater I may contemplate,
Vesuvius281 at home.

CXX

DISTANCE is not the realm of Fox,
Nor by relay282 as Bird;
Abated, Distance is until
Thyself, Beloved!

CXXI

THE treason of an accent
Might vilify the Joy—
To breathe,—corrode the rapture
Of Sanctity to be.

CXXII

How destitute is he
Whose Gold is firm,
Who finds it every time,
The small stale sum—
When Love, with but a pence
Will so display,
As is a disrespect to India!283

CXXIII

CRISIS is sweet and, set of Heart
Upon the hither284 side,
Has dowers of prospective
Surrendered by the Tried.
Inquire of the closing Rose
Which Rapture she preferred,
And she will tell you, sighing,
The transport of the Bud.

CXXIV

TO tell the beauty would decrease,
To state the Spell demean,
There is a syllableless sea
Of which it is the sign.

My will endeavours for its word
And fails, but entertains
A rapture as of legacies—
Of introspective mines.

CXXV

TO love thee, year by year,
May less appear
Than sacrifice and cease.
However, Dear,
Forever might be short
I thought, to show,
And so I pieced it with a flower now.

CXXVI

I showed her heights she never saw—
“Wouldst climb?” I said,
She said “Not so”—
“With me?” I said, “With me?”
I showed her secrets
Morning’s nest,
The rope that Nights were put across—
And now, “Wouldst have me for a Guest?”
She could not find her yes—
And then, I brake my life, and Lo!
A light for her, did solemn glow,
The larger, as her face withdrew—
And could she, further, “No?”

CXXVII

ON my volcano grows the grass,—
A meditative spot,
An area for a bird to choose
Would be the general thought.

How red the fire reeks below,
How insecure the sod—
Did I disclose, would populate
With awe my solitude.

CXXVIII

IF I could tell how glad I was,
I should not be so glad,
But when I cannot make the Force
Nor mould it into word,
I know it is a sign
That new Dilemma be
From mathematics further off,
Than from Eternity.

CXXIX

HER Grace is all she has,
And that, so vast displays,
One Art, to recognize, must be,
Another Art to praise.

CXXX

NO matter where the Saints abide,
They make their circuit fair;
Behold how great a Firmament
Accompanies a star!

CXXXXI

TO see her is a picture,
To hear her is a tune,
To know her an intemperance
As innocent as June;
By which to be undone
Is dearer than Redemption—
Which never to receive,
Makes mockery of melody
It might have been to live.

CXXXII

SO set its sun in thee,
What day is dark to me—
What distance far,
So I the ships may see
That touch how seldomly
Thy shore?

CXXXIII

HAD this one day not been,
Or could it cease to be—
How smitten, how superfluous
Were every other day!

Lest Love should value less
What Loss would value more,
Had it the stricken privilege—
It cherishes before.

CXXXIV

THAT she forgot me was the least,
I felt it second pain,
That I was worthy to forget
What most I thought upon.

Faithful, was all that I could boast,
But Constancy became,
To her, by her innominate,285
A something like a shame.

CXXXV

THE incidents of Love
Are more than its Events,
Investments best expositor
Is the minute per cents.

CXXXVI

A little overflowing word
That any hearing had inferred
For ardor or for tears,
Though generations pass away,
Traditions ripen and decay,
As eloquent appears.

CXXXVII

JUST so, Jesus raps—He does not weary—
Last at the knocker and first at the bell,
Then on divinest tiptoe standing
Might He out-spy the lady’s soul.
When He retires, chilled and weary—
It will be ample time for me;
Patient, upon the steps, until then—
Heart, I am knocking low at Thee!

CXXXVIII

SAFE Despair it is that raves,
Agony is frugal,
Puts itself severe away
For its own perusal.

Garrisoned no Soul can be
In the front of Trouble,
Love is one, not aggregate,
Nor is Dying double.

CXXXIX

THE Face we choose to miss,
Be it but for a day—
As absent as a hundred years
When it has rode away.

CXL

OF so divine a loss
We enter but the gain,
Indemnity for loneliness
That such a bliss has been.

CXLI

THE healed Heart shows its shallow scar
With confidential moan,
Not mended by Mortality
Are fabrics truly torn.
To go its convalescent way
So shameless is to see,
More genuine were Perfidy
Than such Fidelity.

CXLII

GIVE little anguish
Lives will fret.
Give avalanches—
And they’ll slant,
Straighten, look cautious for their breath,
But make no syllable—
Like Death,
Who only shows his
Marble disc—
Sublimer sort than speech.

CXLIII

TO pile like Thunder to its close,
Then crumble grand away,
While everything created hid-
This would be Poetry:
Or Love,—the two coeval came—
We both and neither prove,
Experience either, and consume—
For none see God and live.

CXLIV

THE Stars are old, that stood for me—
The West a little worn,
Yet newer glows the only Gold
I ever cared to earn—
Presuming on that lone result
Her infinite disdain,
But vanquished her with my defeat,
’T was Victory was slain.

CXLV

ALL circumstances are the frame
In which His Face is set,
All Latitudes exist for His
Sufficient continent.

The light His Action and the dark
The Leisure of His Will,
In Him Existence serve, or set
A force illegible.

CXLVI

I did not reach thee,
But my feet slip nearer every day;
Three Rivers and a Hill to cross,
One Desert and a Sea—
I shall not count the journey one
When I am telling thee.

Two deserts—but the year is cold
So that will help the sand—
One desert crossed, the second one
Will feel as cool as land.
Sahara is too little price
To pay for thy Right hand!

The sea comes last. Step merry, feet!
So short have we to go
To play together we are prone,
But we must labor now,
The last shall be the lightest load
That we have had to draw.

The Sun goes crooked—that is night—
Before he makes the bend
We must have passed the middle sea,
Almost we wish the end
Were further off—too great it seems
So near the Whole to stand.

We step like plush, we stand like snow-
The waters murmur now,
Three rivers and the hill are passed,
Two deserts and the sea!
Now Death usurps my premium286
And gets the look at Thee.

INSPIRED BY EMILY DICKINSON’S POETRY

Dickinson is the American poet whose work consisted in exploring states of psychic extremity.

—Adrienne Rich

Poetry

“You who desired so much,” begins Hart Crane’s 1927 poem “To Emily Dickinson.” He goes on to write: “Truly no flower yet withers in your hand.” Emily Dickinson has kindled poetic fervor in writers for much of the twentieth century. Examples abound of poets who invite Dickinson into their poems and who, like Crane, personally address her. Adrienne Rich invokes Dickinson in her 1964 poem “I Am in Danger—Sir—,” whose title comes from a letter Dickinson wrote to Atlantic Monthly editor Thomas Higginson. In another poem, “The Spirit of Place” (1981), Rich speaks of Dickinson’s Amherst house: “This place is large enough for both of us / the river-fog will do for privacy / this is my third and last address to you.” In “The Uses of Emily” (1986), the poet Maxine Kumin disparages “masculine critics” who give little heed to the women poets of their day, instead electing Dickinson as the safe choice, the “one woman worth mention.” She goes on to note that Thomas Higginson was disdainful of Dickinson’s poetry in the years just following her death.

Dickinson has served as an inspiration for countless poems, notably John Berryman’s “Your Birthday in Wisconsin You are 140,” Robert Bly’s “Visiting Emily Dickinson’s Grave with Robert Francis,” Amy Clampitt’s “Amherst,” Archibald MacLeish’s “In and Come In,” Carl Sandburg’s “Public Letter to Emily Dickinson,” and William Stafford’s “Emily.” Visiting Emily: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson (Sheila Coghill and Thom Tammaro, eds., Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000), an anthology of poems by more than eighty poets, celebrates the mystifying poet of Amherst and confirms her extraordinary influence on modern poetry.

Theater

Susan Glaspell’s 1930 play Alison’s House explores the lingering influence of a great poet, modeled after Emily Dickinson, on her family eighteen years after her death. As in much of her work, Glaspell focuses on the past as a source of strength and insight. In 1931 Glaspell received a Pulitzer Prize for Alison’s House; she was the second woman ever to receive the Pulitzer. Throughout her career, Glaspell wrote thirteen plays, fourteen novels, and more than fifty short stories, articles, and essays.

Playwright William Luce delves into Dickinson’s private life and thoughts in his one-woman play The Belle of Amherst (1976). The play focuses on the poet’s passionate relationships with her childhood friends and her father, and Luce interweaves her poetry and epigrams into the script. The Belle of Amherst offers a unique glimpse into the mythologized psychology of Dickinson, particularly in regard to her strong motivation to write. The actress Julie Harris portrayed Dickinson in a 1976 Broadway performance of The Belle of Amherst. The show was filmed and aired on television, and Harris received her fifth Best Actress Tony Award for the role.

Dance

Can the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson be danced? For Martha Graham, the answer was an obvious yes. The acclaimed dancer and choreographer Martha Graham is remembered for her many innovations in modern dance; indeed, her name has become synonymous with the form. Her work Letter to the World, which premiered in 1940, takes its title from Dickinson’s lines “This is my letter to the world, / That never wrote to me” (p. 5). Clad in a full, white gown reminiscent of the clothes Dickinson wore from her twenties on, Graham portrays the inner life of the poet—her torment, loss, and struggle to be happy. Barbara Morgan’s well-known photograph of the performance captures Graham kicking her leg over her back, with her white dress swept up about her.