EMILY DICKINSON

26
It's all I have to bring today -This, and my heart beside -This, and my heart, and all the fields
-And all the meadows wide -Be sure you count -- should I forget
Some one the sum could tell -This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

(1830-1886)
And Saints -- to windows run -To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the -- Sun
249

49

Wild Nights -- Wild Nights!

Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

I never lost as much but twice,

And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!

Futile -- the Winds -To a Heart in port -Done with the Compass -Done with the Chart!

Angels -- twice descending

Reimbursed my store -Burglar! Banker -- Father!
I am poor once more!

Rowing in Eden -Ah, the Sea!

Might I but moor -- Tonight -In Thee!

214

288

I taste a liquor never brewed -From Tankards scooped in Pearl -Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!

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!

Inebriate of Air -- am I -And Debauchee of Dew -Reeling -- thro endless summer days
-From inns of Molten Blue -When "Landlords" turn the drunken
Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door -When Butterflies -- renounce their
"drams" -I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats --

How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!

How public -- like a Frog -To tell one's name -- the livelong June
-To an admiring Bog!
289
I know some lonely Houses off the
Road
A Robber'd like the look of -Wooden barred,
And Windows hanging low,
Inviting to -A Portico,

Where two could creep -One -- hand the Tools -The other peep -To make sure All's Asleep -Old fashioned eyes -Not easy to surprise!
How orderly the Kitchen'd look, by
night,
With just a Clock -But they could gag the Tick -And Mice won't bark -And so the Walls -- don't tell -None -- will -A pair of Spectacles ajar just stir -An Almanac's aware -Was it the Mat -- winked,
Or a Nervous Star?
The Moon -- slides down the stair,
To see who's there!
There's plunder -- where -Tankard, or Spoon -Earring -- or Stone -A Watch -- Some Ancient Brooch
To match the Grandmama -Staid sleeping -- there -Day -- rattles -- too
Stealth's -- slow -The Sun has got as far
As the third Sycamore -Screams Chanticleer
"Who's there"?
And Echoes -- Trains away,
Sneer -- "Where"!
While the old Couple, just astir,
Fancy the Sunrise -- left the door ajar!

Around a Pile of Mountains -And supercilious peer

In Shanties -- by the sides of Roads -And then a Quarry pare
To fit its Ribs
And crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid -- hooting stanza -Then chase itself down Hill -And neigh like Boanerges -Then -- punctual as a Star
Stop -- docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door
712
Because I could not stop for Death -He kindly stopped for me -The Carriage held but just Ourselves
-And Immortality.
We slowly drove -- He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility -We passed the
strove
At Recess -- in
We passed the
-We passed the

School, where Children

the Ring -Fields of Gazing Grain
Setting Sun --

Or rather -- He passed Us -The Dews drew quivering and chill -For only Gossamer, my Gown -My Tippet -- only Tulle --

585
I like to see it lap the Miles -And lick the Valleys up -And stop to feed itself at Tanks -And then -- prodigious step

We paused before a House that

seemed
A Swelling of the Ground -The Roof was scarcely visible -The Cornice -- in the Ground --

Since then -- 'tis Centuries -- and yet

Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity
1212
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
1400
What mystery pervades a well!
That water lives so far -A neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar
Whose limit none have ever seen,
But just his lid of glass --

Like looking every time you please

In an abyss's face!
The grass does not appear afraid,
I often wonder he
Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is awe to me.
Related somehow they may be,
The sedge stands next the sea -Where he is floorless
And does no timidity betray
But nature is a stranger yet;
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted
house,
Nor simplified her ghost.
To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her
less
The nearer her they get.

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."
(1914)

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice

Is also great
And would suffice.
(1923)

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
(1923)
Acquainted with the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rainand back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

(1928)
The Gift Outright
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
(1942)
In A Glass of Cider"
It seemed I was a mite of sediment
That waited for the bottom to ferment
So I could catch a bubble in ascent.
I rode up on one till the bubble burst
And when that left me to sink back reversed
I was no worse off than I was at first.
I'd catch another bubble if I waited.
The thing was to get now and then elated. (1962)