A daily poem from the complete works of Emily Dickinson.
You are currently browsing the archive for the Life category.
One day is there of the series
Termed Thanksgiving day,
Celebrated part at table,
Part in memory.
Neither patriarch nor pussy,
I dissect the play;
Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
Reflex holiday.
Had there been no sharp subtraction
From the early sum,
Not an acre or a caption
Where was once a room,
Not a mention, whose small pebble
Wrinkled any bay, –
Unto such, were such assembly,
‘T were Thanksgiving day.
Tags: bee, men, see, thanksgiving, think
Softened by Time’s consummate plush,
How sleek the woe appears
That threatened childhood’s citadel
And undermined the years!
Bisected now by bleaker griefs,
We envy the despair
That devastated childhood’s realm,
So easy to repair.
Tags: year
One day is there of the series
Termed Thanksgiving day,
Celebrated part at table,
Part in memory.
Neither patriarch nor pussy,
I dissect the play;
Seems it, to my hooded thinking,
Reflex holiday.
Had there been no sharp subtraction
From the early sum,
Not an acre or a caption
Where was once a room,
Not a mention, whose small pebble
Wrinkled any bay, –
Unto such, were such assembly,
‘T were Thanksgiving day.
Tags: bee, men, see, thanksgiving, think
I stepped from plank to plank
So slow and cautiously;
The stars about my head I felt,
About my feet the sea.
I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch, –
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experience.
Is bliss, then, such abyss
I must not put my foot amiss
For fear I spoil my shoe?
I’d rather suit my foot
Than save my boot,
For yet to buy another pair
Is possible
At any fair.
But bliss is sold just once;
The patent lost
None buy it any more.
A modest lot, a fame petite,
A brief campaign of sting and sweet
Is plenty! Is enough!
A sailor’s business is the shore,
A soldier’s — balls. Who asketh more
Must seek the neighboring life!
You cannot put a fire out;
A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
Upon the slowest night.
You cannot fold a flood
And put it in a drawer, –
Because the winds would find it out,
And tell your cedar floor.
