Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete. Эмили Дикинсон

suits his own austerity,

      And satisfies an awe

      That men must slake in wilderness,

      Or in the desert cloy, —

      An instinct for the hoar, the bald,

      Lapland's necessity.

      The hemlock's nature thrives on cold;

      The gnash of northern winds

      Is sweetest nutriment to him,

      His best Norwegian wines.

      To satin races he is nought;

      But children on the Don

      Beneath his tabernacles play,

      And Dnieper wrestlers run.

XXXI

      There's a certain slant of light,

      On winter afternoons,

      That oppresses, like the weight

      Of cathedral tunes.

      Heavenly hurt it gives us;

      We can find no scar,

      But internal difference

      Where the meanings are.

      None may teach it anything,

      ' T is the seal, despair, —

      An imperial affliction

      Sent us of the air.

      When it comes, the landscape listens,

      Shadows hold their breath;

      When it goes, 't is like the distance

      On the look of death.

IV. TIME AND ETERNITYI

      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!

      How pomp surpassing ermine,

      When simple you and I

      Present our meek escutcheon,

      And claim the rank to die!

IITOO LATE

      Delayed till she had ceased to know,

      Delayed till in its vest of snow

          Her loving bosom lay.

      An hour behind the fleeting breath,

      Later by just an hour than death, —

          Oh, lagging yesterday!

      Could she have guessed that it would be;

      Could but a crier of the glee

          Have climbed the distant hill;

      Had not the bliss so slow a pace, —

      Who knows but this surrendered face

          Were undefeated still?

      Oh, if there may departing be

      Any forgot by victory

          In her imperial round,

      Show them this meek apparelled thing,

      That could not stop to be a king,

          Doubtful if it be crowned!

IIIASTRA CASTRA

      Departed to the judgment,

      A mighty afternoon;

      Great clouds like ushers leaning,

      Creation looking on.

      The flesh surrendered, cancelled,

      The bodiless begun;

      Two worlds, like audiences, disperse

      And leave the soul alone.

IV

      Safe in their alabaster chambers,

      Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,

      Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,

      Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

      Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;

      Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;

      Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, —

      Ah, what sagacity perished here!

      Grand go the years in the crescent above them;

      Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,

      Diadems drop and Doges surrender,

      Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.

V

      On this long storm the rainbow rose,

      On this late morn the sun;

      The clouds, like listless elephants,

      Horizons straggled down.

      The birds rose smiling in their nests,

      The gales indeed were done;

      Alas! how heedless were the eyes

      On whom the summer shone!

      The quiet nonchalance of death

      No daybreak can bestir;

      The slow archangel's syllables

      Must awaken her.

VIFROM THE CHRYSALIS

      My cocoon tightens, colors tease,

      I'm feeling for the air;

      A dim capacity for wings

      Degrades the dress I wear.

      A power of butterfly must be

      The aptitude to fly,

      Meadows of majesty concedes

      And easy sweeps of sky.

      So I must baffle at the hint

      And cipher at the sign,

      And make much blunder, if at last

      I take the clew divine.

VIISETTING SAIL

      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?

VIII

      Look back on time with kindly eyes,

      He doubtless did his best;

      How softly sinks his trembling sun

      In human nature's west!

IX

      A train went through a burial gate,

      A bird broke forth and sang,

      And trilled, and quivered, and shook his throat

      Till all the churchyard rang;

      And