Emily Dickinson

«Who never wanted - maddest Joy | Remains to him unknown - | The Banquet of Abstemiousness | Defaces that of Wine - | Within it's reach, though yet ungrasped | Desire's perfect Goal - | No nearer - lest the Actual - | Should disenthrall thy soul.»

«To earn it by disdaining it | Is Fame's consummate Fee - | He loves what spurns him - | Look behind - He is pursuing thee - | So let us gather - every Day - | The Aggregate of Life's Bouquet | Be Honor and not shame.»

«We shun because we prize her Face | Lest sight's ineffable disgrace | Our Adoration stain.»

«With Pinions of Disdain | The soul can farther fly | Than any feather specified | in - Ornithology - | It wafts this sordid Flesh | Beyond it's dull - control | And during it's electric gale - | The body is - a soul - | instructing by itself - | How little work it be - | To put off filaments like this | for immortality.»

«Spurn the temerity - | Rashness of Calvary - | Gay were Gethsemane | Knew we of thee.»

«How brittle are the Piers | On which our Faith doth tread - | No Bridge below doth totter so - | Yet none hath such a Crowd. | It is as old as God - | Indeed - 'twas built by him - | He sent his Son to test the Plank - | And he pronounced it firm.»

«Not that he goes - we love him more | who led us while he stayed. | Beyond Earth's trafficking frontier, | for what he moved, he made.»

«Go not too near a House of Rose - | The depredation of a Breeze - | Or inundation of a Dew | Alarm it's Walls away - | Nor try to tie the Butterfly, | Nor climb the Bars of Ecstasy - | In insecurity to lie | Is Joy's insuring quality.»

«How ruthless are the gentle - | How cruel are the kind - | God broke his contract to his Lamb | To qualify the Wind.»

«Than Heaven more remote, | For Heaven is the Root, | But these the flitted Seed, | More flown indeed, | Than Ones that never were, | Or those that hide, and are - | What madness, by their side, | A vision to provide | Of future Days | They cannot praise - | | My Soul - to find them - come - | They cannot call - they're dumb - | Nor prove - nor Woo - | But that they have Abode - | Is absolute as God - | And instant - too.»

«A Dew sufficed itself - | And satisfied a Leaf | And thought "How vast a Destiny"! | "How trivial is Life!" | The Sun went out to work - | The Day went out to play - | But not again that Dew be seen | By Physiognomy - | | Whether by Day abducted - | Or emptied by the Sun | Into the Sea - in passing - | Eternally unknown. | | Attested to this Day | That awful Tragedy | By Transport's instability | And Doom's celerity.»

«Behold this little Bane - | The Boon of all alive - | As common as it is unknown | The name of it is Love - | To lack of it is Woe - | To own of it is Wound - | Not elsewhere - if in Paradise | It's Tantamount be found.»

«The healed Heart shows it's shallow scar | With confidential moan - | Not mended by Mortality | Are Fabrics truly torn - | To go it's convalescent way | So shameless is to see | More genuine were perfidy | Than such Fidelity.»

«These Fevered Days - to take them to the Forest | Where Waters cool around the mosses crawl - | And shade is all that devastates the stillness | Seems it sometimes this would be all.»

«To mend each tattered Faith | There is a needle fair | Though no appearance indicate - | 'Tis threaded in the Air - | And though it do not wear | As if it never Tore | 'Tis very comfortable indeed | And spacious as before.»

«A Chilly Peace infests the Grass | The Sun respectful lies - | Not any Trance of industry | These shadows scrutinize - | Whose Allies go no more astray | For service or for Glee - | Though all mankind do anchor here | From whatsoever Sea.»

«A little Snow was here and there | Disseminated in her Hair - | Since she and I had met and played | Decade had hastened to Decade - | But Time had added, not obtained | Impregnable the Rose | For summer too indelible - | Too obdurate - for Snows.»

«I thought the Train would never come - | How slow the whistle sang - | I dont believe a peevish Bird | So whimpered for the Spring - | I taught my Heart a hundred times | Precisely what to say - | Provoking Lover, when you came | It's Treatise flew away | To hide my strategy too late | To wiser be too soon - | For miseries so halcyon | The happiness atone.»

«How soft a Caterpillar steps - | I find one on my Hand | From such a Velvet world it came - | Such plushes at command | It's soundless travels just arrest | My slow - terrestrial eye - | Intent upon it's own career - | What use has it for me.»

«How good his Lava Bed, | To this laborious Boy - | Who must be up to call the World | And dress the sleepy Day.»