Poems by Emily Dickinson Part 61

It burned me in the night, It blistered in my dream; It sickened fresh upon my sight With every morning's beam.

I thought that storm was brief, -- The maddest, quickest by; But Nature lost the date of this, And left it in the sky.

LI.

Water is taught by thirst; Land, by the oceans pa.s.sed; Transport, by throe; Peace, by its battles told; Love, by memorial mould; Birds, by the snow.

LII.

THIRST.

We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act; And later, when we die, A little water supplicate Of fingers going by.

It intimates the finer want, Whose adequate supply Is that great water in the west Termed immortality.

LIII.

A clock stopped -- not the mantel's; Geneva's farthest skill Can't put the puppet bowing That just now dangled still.

An awe came on the trinket!

The figures hunched with pain, Then quivered out of decimals Into degreeless noon.

It will not stir for doctors, This pendulum of snow; The shopman importunes it, While cool, concernless No

Nods from the gilded pointers, Nods from the seconds slim, Decades of arrogance between The dial life and him.

LIV.

CHARLOTTE BRONTe'S GRAVE.

All overgrown by cunning moss, All interspersed with weed, The little cage of 'Currer Bell,'

In quiet Haworth laid.

This bird, observing others, When frosts too sharp became, Retire to other lat.i.tudes, Quietly did the same,

But differed in returning; Since Yorks.h.i.+re hills are green, Yet not in all the nests I meet Can nightingale be seen.

Gathered from many wanderings, Gethsemane can tell Through what transporting anguish She reached the asphodel!

Soft fall the sounds of Eden Upon her puzzled ear; Oh, what an afternoon for heaven, When 'Bronte' entered there!

LV.

A toad can die of light!

Death is the common right Of toads and men, -- Of earl and midge The privilege.

Why swagger then?

The gnat's supremacy Is large as thine.

LVI.

Far from love the Heavenly Father Leads the chosen child; Oftener through realm of briar Than the meadow mild,

Oftener by the claw of dragon Than the hand of friend, Guides the little one predestined To the native land.

LVII.

SLEEPING.

A long, long sleep, a famous sleep That makes no show for dawn By stretch of limb or stir of lid, -- An independent one.

Was ever idleness like this?

Within a hut of stone To bask the centuries away Nor once look up for noon?

LVIII.

RETROSPECT.