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.