Poems by Emily Dickinson, Third Series. Эмили Дикинсон

we should deem superfluous

        Many sciences

      Not pursued by learnèd angels

        In scholastic skies!

      Low amid that glad Belles lettres

        Grant that we may stand,

      Stars, amid profound Galaxies,

        At that grand 'Right hand'!

      XII.

      A SYLLABLE

      Could mortal lip divine

        The undeveloped freight

      Of a delivered syllable,

        'T would crumble with the weight.

      XIII.

      PARTING

      My life closed twice before its close;

        It yet remains to see

      If Immortality unveil

        A third event to me,

      So huge, so hopeless to conceive,

        As these that twice befell.

      Parting is all we know of heaven,

        And all we need of hell.

      XIV.

      ASPIRATION

      We never know how high we are

        Till we are called to rise;

      And then, if we are true to plan,

        Our statures touch the skies.

      The heroism we recite

        Would be a daily thing,

      Did not ourselves the cubits warp

        For fear to be a king.

      XV.

      THE INEVITABLE

      While I was fearing it, it came,

        But came with less of fear,

      Because that fearing it so long

        Had almost made it dear.

      There is a fitting a dismay,

        A fitting a despair.

      'Tis harder knowing it is due,

        Than knowing it is here.

      The trying on the utmost,

        The morning it is new,

      Is terribler than wearing it

        A whole existence through.

      XVI.

      A BOOK

      There is no frigate like a book

        To take us lands away,

      Nor any coursers like a page

        Of prancing poetry.

      This traverse may the poorest take

        Without oppress of toll;

      How frugal is the chariot

        That bears a human soul!

      XVII

      Who has not found the heaven below

        Will fail of it above.

      God's residence is next to mine,

        His furniture is love.

      XVIII.

      A PORTRAIT

      A face devoid of love or grace,

        A hateful, hard, successful face,

      A face with which a stone

        Would feel as thoroughly at ease

      As were they old acquaintances, —

        First time together thrown.

      XIX.

      I HAD A GUINEA GOLDEN

      I had a guinea golden;

        I lost it in the sand,

      And though the sum was simple,

        And pounds were in the land,

      Still had it such a value

        Unto my frugal eye,

      That when I could not find it

        I sat me down to sigh.

      I had a crimson robin

        Who sang full many a day,

      But when the woods were painted

        He, too, did fly away.

      Time brought me other robins, —

        Their ballads were the same, —

      Still for my missing troubadour

        I kept the 'house at hame.'

      I had a star in heaven;

        One Pleiad was its name,

      And when I was not heeding

        It wandered from the same.

      And though the skies are crowded,

        And all the night ashine,

      I do not care about it,

        Since none of them are mine.

      My story has a moral:

        I have a missing friend, —

      Pleiad its name, and robin,

        And guinea in the sand, —

      And when this mournful ditty,

        Accompanied with tear,

      Shall meet the eye of traitor

        In country far from here,

      Grant that repentance solemn

        May seize upon his mind,

      And he no consolation

        Beneath the sun may find.

      NOTE. – This poem may have had, like many others, a personal origin. It is more than probable that it was sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty reminder of letter-writing delinquencies.

      XX.

      SATURDAY AFTERNOON

      From all the jails the boys and girls

        Ecstatically leap, —

      Beloved, only afternoon

        That prison doesn't keep.

      They storm the earth and stun the air,

        A mob of solid bliss.

      Alas! that frowns could lie in wait

        For such a foe as this!

      XXI

      Few get enough, – enough is one;

        To that ethereal throng

      Have not each one of us the right

        To stealthily belong?

      XXII

      Upon the gallows hung a wretch,

        Too sullied for the hell

      To which the law entitled him.

        As nature's curtain fell

      The