Three snippets from that elusive New England poet Emily Dickinson, Such a wealth of feeling and wisdom is packed into her elliptical verses.
HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS
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 chilliest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
OF ALL THE SOULS THAT STAND CREATE
Of all the souls that stand create
I have elected one.
When sense from spirit files away,
And subterfuge is done;
~
When that which is and that which was
Apart, intrinsic, stand,
And this brief tragedy of flesh
Is shifted like a sand;
~
When figures show their royal front
And mists are carved away, -
Behold the atom I preferred
To all the lists of clay!
MY LIFE CLOSED TWICE BEFORE ITS CLOSE
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
~
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
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