Emily Dickinson
498
I envy Seas, whereon He rides—
I envy Spokes of Wheels
Of Chariots, that Him convey—
I envy Crooked Hills
That gaze upon His journey—
How easy All can see
What is forbidden utterly
I stepped from plank to plank
So slow and cautiously;
The stars about my head I felt,
About my feet the sea.
I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch,—
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experience.
One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.
Before you thought of spring,
Except as a surmise,
You see, God bless his suddenness,
A fellow in the skies
Of independent hues,
A little weather-worn,
Inspiriting habiliments
Of indigo and brown.
586
We talked as Girls do —
Fond, and late —
We speculated fair, on every subject, but the Grave —
Of ours, none affair —
We handled Destinies, as cool —
As we — Disposers — be —
And God, a Quiet Party
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
809
Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity—
Unable they that love—to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.
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.
766
My Faith is larger than the Hills —
So when the Hills decay —
My Faith must take the Purple Wheel
To show the Sun the way —
'Tis first He steps upon the Vane —
And then — upon the Hill —
And then abroad the World He go
I never saw a moor;
I never saw the sea,
Yet know I how the heather looks
And what a billow be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven.
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the checks were given.
569
I reckon—when I count it all—
First—Poets—Then the Sun—
Then Summer—Then the Heaven of God—
And then—the List is done—
But, looking back—the First so seems
To Comprehend the Whole—
The Others look a needless Show—
1510
How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn't care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears—
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
