EMILY Dickinson (1830-1886) is one of the great enigmas of American literature.
This New England woman's life was as apparently uneventful as her poetry was startling in its elliptic, gnomic originality. Here are two tiny pieces by her: the first shows her charm; the second her profundity.
I'M NOBODY
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! They'd advertise - you know!
How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!
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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