Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet.
Superiority to Fate Is difficult to gain 'Tis not conferred of Any But possible to earn.
Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labour, and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the school where children played, Their lessons scarcely done; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound. Since then 'tis centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity.
There is a Zone whose even Years No Solstice interrupt - Whose Sun constructs perpetual Noon Whose perfect Seasons wait - Whose Summer set in Summer, till The Centuries of June And Centuries of August cease And Consciousness - is Noon.
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - In Corners - till a Day The Owner passed - identified - And carried Me away -
Safe Despair it is that raves- Agony is frugal. Puts itself severe away For its own perusal.
It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy - a condition with which the cynicism of human nature so cordially complies, one could wish it were a concurrence upon a subject more noble.
The revery alone will do If bees are few.
A Clock stopped-- Not the Mantel's-- Geneva's farthest skill Can't put the puppet bowing-- That just now dangled still
The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry's cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town. The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I'll put a trinket on.
This is the Hour of Lead- Remembered, if outlived, As freezing persons, recollect the Snow- First-Chill-then Stupor- then the letting go---
All things do go a-courting, In earth, or sea, or air, God hath made nothing single But thee in His world so fair.
There is a solitude of space. A solitude of sea. A solitude of death, but these societies shall be compared with that profounder site-that polar privacy. A soul admitted to itself--Finite infinity.
Unable are the Loved to die For Love is Immortality, Nay, it is Deity - Unable they that love - to die For Love reforms Vitality Into Divinity.
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.
Beauty is not caused. It is.
One need not be a chamber to be haunted; One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing Material place.
I tasted life.
Nothing more do I ask than to share with you the ecstasy and sacrament of my life.
The hearts that never lean must fall.
Beauty crowds me till I die. Beauty, mercy have on me! Yet if I expire to-day Let it be in sight of thee!