Emily Dickinson

«Ambition cannot find him - | Affection doesn't know | How many leagues of nowhere | Lie between them now! | Yesterday, undistinguished! | Eminent Today | For our mutual honor, | Immortality!»

«Success is counted sweetest | By those who never succeed. | To comprehend a nectar | Requires sorest need. | Not one of all the purple Host | Who took the Flag today | Can tell the definition | So clear of Victory | | As he defeated - dying - | On whose forbidden ear | The distant strains of triumph | Burst agonized and clear!»

«A throe upon the features - | A hurry in the breath - | An ecstasy of parting | Denominated "Death" - | An anguish at the mention | Which when to patience grown - | I've known permission given | To rejoin it's own.»

«Who never lost, are unprepared | A Coronet to find! | Who never thirsted | Flagons, and Cooling Tamarind! | Who never climbed the weary league - | Can such a foot explore | The purple territories | On Pizarro's shore? | | How many Legions overcome - | The Emperor will say? | How many Colors taken | On Revolution Day? | | How many Bullets bearest? | Hast Thou the Royal scar? | Angels! Write "Promoted" | On this Soldier's brow!»

«Glowing is her Bonnet - | Glowing is her Cheek - | Glowing is her Kirtle - | Yet she cannot speak. | Better as the Daisy | From the Summer hill | Vanish unrecorded | Save by tearful rill - | | Save by loving sunrise | Looking for her face. | Save by feet unnumbered | Pausing at the place.»

«She died at play - | Gambolled away | Her lease of spotted hours, | Then sank as gaily as a Turk | Upon a Couch of flowers - | Her ghost strolled softly over the hill - | Yesterday, and Today - | Her vestments as the silver fleece - | Her countenance as spray.»

«Exultation is the going | Of an inland soul to sea, | Past the houses - past the headlands, | Into deep Eternity - | Bred as we, among the mountains, | Can the sailor understand | The divine intoxication | Of the first league out from land.»

«Never hear the word "Escape" | Without a quicker blood! | A sudden expectation! | A flying attitude! | I never hear of prisons broad | By soldiers battered down - | But I tug, childish, at my bars | Only to fail again!»

«Our lives are Swiss - | So still - so Cool - | Till some odd afternoon | The Alps neglect their Curtains | And we look farther on! | Italy stands the other side! | While like a guard between - | The solemn Alps - | The siren Alps | Forever intervene!»

«A darting year - a pomp - a tear - | a waking on a morn | to find that what one waked for, | inhales the different dawn.»

«As by the dead we love to sit - | Become so wondrous dear - | As for the lost we grapple | Tho' all the rest are here - | In broken mathematics | We estimate our prize | Vast - in it's fading ratio | To our penurious eyes!»

«We should not mind so small a flower - | Except it quiet bring | Our little garden that we lost | Back to the Lawn again. | So spicy her Carnations nod - | So drunken, reel her Bees - | So silver steal a hundred flutes | From out a hundred trees - | | That whose sees this little flower | By faith may clear behold | The Bobolinks around the throne | And Dandelions gold.»

«Whose cheek is this? | What rosy face | Has lost a blush today? | I found her - "pleiad" - in the woods | And bore her safe away - | Robins, in the tradition | Did cover such with leaves, | But which the cheek - | And which the pall | My scrutiny deceives.»

«Some things that fly there be - | Birds - Hours - the Bumblebee - | Of these no Elegy. | Some things that stay there be - | Grief - Hills - Eternity - | Nor this behooveth me. | | There are that resting, rise. | Can I expound the skies? | How still the Riddle lies.»

«Within my reach! | I could have touched! | I might have chanced that way! | Soft sauntered thro' the village - | Sauntered as soft away! | So unsuspected Violets | Within the meadows go - | Too late for striving fingers | That passed, an hour ago!»

«A science - so the Savants say, | "Comparative Anatomy" - | By which a single bone - | Is made a secret to unfold | Of some rare tenant of the mold - | Else perished in the stone - | So to the eye prospective led, | This meekest flower of the mead | Upon a winter's day, | Stands representative in gold | Of Rose and Lily, manifold, | And countless Butterfly!»

«The rainbow never tells me | That gust and storm are by - | Yet is she more convincing | Than Philosophy. | My flowers turn from Forums - | Yet eloquent declare | What Cato couldn't prove me | Except the birds were here!»

«One dignity delays for all - | One mitred afternoon - | None can avoid this purple - | None evade this crown! | Coach, it insures, and footmen - | Chamber, and state, and throng - | Bells, also, in the village | As we ride grand along! | | What dignified attendants! | What service when we pause! | How loyally at parting | Their hundred hats they raise! | | Her pomp surpassing ermine | When simple You, and I, | Present our meek escutscheon | And claim the rank to die.»

«New feet within my garden go - | New fingers stir the sod - | A Troubadour upon the Elm | Betrays the solitude. | New Children play upon the green - | New Weary sleep below - | And still the pensive Spring returns - | And still the punctual snow!»

«Angels, in the early morning | May be seen the Dews among, | Stooping - plucking - smiling - flying - | Do the Buds to them belong? | Angels, when the sun is hottest | May be seen the sands among, | Stooping - plucking - sighing - flying - | Parched the flowers they bear along.»