Emily Dickinson

Wild nights - Wild nights! Were I with thee Wild nights should be Our luxury!Futile - the winds - To a Heart in port - Done with the Compass -

Who has not found the heaven below Will fail of it above. God's residence is next to mine, His furniture is love.

Who has not found the Heaven – below – Will fail of it above – For Angels rent the House next ours, Wherever we remove –

What Soft – Cherubic Creatures – These Gentlewomen are – One would as soon assault a Plush – Or violate a Star –Such Dimity Convictions – A Horror so refined Of freckled Human Nature –

We outgrow love, like other things And put it in the Drawer – Till it an Antique fashion shows – Like Costumes Grandsires wore.

Upon the gallows hung a wretch, Too sullied for the hell To which the law entitled him. As nature’s curtain fell The one who bore him tottered in, For this was woman’s son.

Truth – is as old as God – His Twin identity And will endure as long as He A Co-Eternity –And perish on the Day Himself is borne away From Mansion of the Universe

To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights, What must the Midnights – be!

This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies And lads and girls; Was laughter and ability and sighing, And frocks and curls.

This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me – The simple News that Nature told – With tender Majesty Her Message is committed To Hands I cannot see – For love of Her – Sweet – countrymen –

They shut me up in Prose - As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet - Because they liked me "still" -Still! Could themself have peeped - And seen my Brain - go round - They might as wise have lodged a Bird

There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons - That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes -Heavenly Hurt, it gives us - We can find no scar, But internal difference -

There is a solitude of space, A solitude of sea, A solitude of death, but these Society shall be, Compared with that profounder site, That polar privacy,

The sweets of Pillage can be known To no one but the Thief, Compassion for Integrity Is his divinest Grief.

I've known her – from an ample nation – Choose One – Then – close the Valves of her attention – Like Stone –

The Soul selects her own Society – Then – shuts the Door – To her divine Majority – Present no more –

The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy.

If Aims impel these Astral Ones The ones allowed to know Know that which makes them as forgot As Dawn forgets them – now

The face we choose to miss, Be it but for a day— As absent as a hundred years When it has rode away.

The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear; Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year.And then, that we have followed them We more than half suspect, So intimate have we become

A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came, A Wisdom, without Face, or Name, A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home And so the Night became.

The blunder is to estimate,— "Eternity is Then," We say, as of a station. Meanwhile he is so near, He joins me in my ramble, Divides abode with me,

That such have died enables us The tranquiller to die; That such have lived, certificate For immortality.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually