Poems by Emily Dickinson Part 19

That one so honest be extant As take the tale for true That "Whatsoever you shall ask, Itself be given you."

But I, grown shrewder, scan the skies With a suspicious air, -- As children, swindled for the first, All swindlers be, infer.

XIV.

The thought beneath so slight a film Is more distinctly seen, -- As laces just reveal the surge, Or mists the Apennine.

XV.

The soul unto itself Is an imperial friend, -- Or the most agonizing spy An enemy could send.

Secure against its own, No treason it can fear; Itself its sovereign, of itself The soul should stand in awe.

XVI.

Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife!

Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the culprit, -- Life!

XVII.

THE RAILWAY TRAIN.

I like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up, And stop to feed itself at tanks; And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains, And, supercilious, peer In shanties by the sides of roads; And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, 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.

XVIII.

THE SHOW.

The show is not the show, But they that go.

Menagerie to me My neighbor be.

Fair play -- Both went to see.

XIX.

Delight becomes pictorial When viewed through pain, -- More fair, because impossible That any gain.

The mountain at a given distance In amber lies; Approached, the amber flits a little, -- And that 's the skies!

XX.

A thought went up my mind to-day That I have had before, But did not finish, -- some way back, I could not fix the year,

Nor where it went, nor why it came The second time to me, Nor definitely what it was, Have I the art to say.

But somewhere in my soul, I know I 've met the thing before; It just reminded me -- 't was all -- And came my way no more.

XXI.

Is Heaven a physician?

They say that He can heal; But medicine posthumous Is unavailable.

Is Heaven an exchequer?

They speak of what we owe; But that negotiation I 'm not a party to.

XXII.