The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Эмили Дикинсон

Oh, bells that in the steeples be,

       At first repeat it slow!

       For heaven is a different thing

       Conjectured, and waked sudden in,

       And might o'erwhelm me so!

      V.

       Glee! The great storm is over!

       Four have recovered the land;

       Forty gone down together

       Into the boiling sand.

       Ring, for the scant salvation!

       Toll, for the bonnie souls, —

       Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,

       Spinning upon the shoals!

       How they will tell the shipwreck

       When winter shakes the door,

       Till the children ask, "But the forty?

       Did they come back no more?"

       Then a silence suffuses the story,

       And a softness the teller's eye;

       And the children no further question,

       And only the waves reply.

      VI.

       If I can stop one heart from breaking,

       I shall not live in vain;

       If I can ease one life the aching,

       Or cool one pain,

       Or help one fainting robin

       Unto his nest again,

       I shall not live in vain.

      VII.

       ALMOST!

       Within my reach!

       I could have touched!

       I might have chanced that way!

       Soft sauntered through the village,

       Sauntered as soft away!

       So unsuspected violets

       Within the fields lie low,

       Too late for striving fingers

       That passed, an hour ago.

      VIII.

       A wounded deer leaps highest,

       I've heard the hunter tell;

       'T is but the ecstasy of death,

       And then the brake is still.

       The smitten rock that gushes,

       The trampled steel that springs;

       A cheek is always redder

       Just where the hectic stings!

       Mirth is the mail of anguish,

       In which it cautions arm,

       Lest anybody spy the blood

       And "You're hurt" exclaim!

      IX.

       The heart asks pleasure first,

       And then, excuse from pain;

       And then, those little anodynes

       That deaden suffering;

       And then, to go to sleep;

       And then, if it should be

       The will of its Inquisitor,

       The liberty to die.

      X.

       IN A LIBRARY.

       A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is

       To meet an antique book,

       In just the dress his century wore;

       A privilege, I think,

       His venerable hand to take,

       And warming in our own,

       A passage back, or two, to make

       To times when he was young.

       His quaint opinions to inspect,

       His knowledge to unfold

       On what concerns our mutual mind,

       The literature of old;

       What interested scholars most,

       What competitions ran

       When Plato was a certainty.

       And Sophocles a man;

       When Sappho was a living girl,

       And Beatrice wore

       The gown that Dante deified.

       Facts, centuries before,

       He traverses familiar,

       As one should come to town

       And tell you all your dreams were true;

       He lived where dreams were sown.

       His presence is enchantment,

       You beg him not to go;

       Old volumes shake their vellum heads

       And tantalize, just so.

      XI.

       Much madness is divinest sense

       To a discerning eye;

       Much sense the starkest madness.

       'T is the majority

       In this, as all, prevails.

       Assent, and you are sane;

       Demur, — you're straightway dangerous,

       And handled with a chain.

      XII.

       I asked no other thing,

       No other was denied.

       I offered Being for it;

       The mighty merchant smiled.

       Brazil? He twirled a button,

       Without a glance my way:

       "But, madam, is there nothing else

       That we can show to-day?"

      XIII.

       EXCLUSION.

       The soul selects her own society,

       Then shuts the door;

       On her divine majority

       Obtrude no more.

       Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing

       At her low gate;

       Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling

       Upon her mat.

       I've known her from an ample nation

       Choose one;

       Then close the valves of her attention

       Like stone.

      XIV.

       THE SECRET.

       Some things that fly there be, —

       Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:

       Of these no elegy.

       Some things that stay there be, —

       Grief, hills, eternity:

       Nor this behooveth me.

       There are, that resting, rise.

       Can I expound the skies?

       How still the riddle lies!

      XV.

       THE LONELY HOUSE.

       I know some lonely houses off the road

       A robber 'd like the look of, —

       Wooden barred,

       And windows hanging low,

       Inviting to