Poems by Emily Dickinson, Series Two
1891
These are poems written by a woman who spent most of her life in a small Massachusetts town, rarely leaving her house, and yet somehow captured the universe in fragments of dashes and capital letters. Emily Dickinson's verse operates like no other poetry in English: compressed, mysterious, defiant of conventional grammar, yet unbelievably precise in its evocation of what it feels like to be alive - and what it feels like to be dead. This second collection gathers some of her most celebrated work, including "Because I could not stop for Death," that eerie carriage ride past schoolchildren and fields of grain, and "There's a certain slant of light," where winter afternoon light becomes almost religious experience. Here too are poems that dissect hope like a surgeon, that flirt with eternity, that make solitude feel both terrifying and holy. Dickinson wrote about death the way other poets write about love - with obsessive precision, strange tenderness, and the assumption that the reader has already glimpsed the other side. These poems don't explain. They implicate. They are for anyone who has ever felt that language, at its most compressed, might finally tell the truth.
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“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands awayNor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest takeWithout oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears a Human soul.””
— Emily Dickinson
“She died--this was the way she died;And when her breath was done,Took up her simple wardrobeAnd started for the sun.Her little figure at the gateThe angels must have spied,Since I could never find herUpon the mortal side.””
— Emily Dickinson
“Anger as soon as fed is dead- 'Tis starving makes it fat. ””
— Emily Dickinson
“Wild Nights”
— Emily Dickinson
“One need not be a Chamber”
— Emily Dickinson
“After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,And Yesterday, or Centuries before?The Feet, mechanical, go round – Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – A Wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone – This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –””
— Emily Dickinson
“Inebriate of Air”
— Emily Dickinson
“The Soul selects her own Society”
— Emily Dickinson
“This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –””
— Emily Dickinson
