Undue significance a starving man attaches To food Far off; he sighs, and therefore hopeless, And therefore good.

THE TULIP. She slept beneath a tree Remembered but by me. I touched her cradle mute; She recognized the foot, Put on her carmine suit, -- And see!

Water is taught by thirst; Land, by the oceans passed; Transport, by throe; Peace, by its battles told; Love, by memorial mould; Birds, by the snow.

I asked no other thing, No other was denied. I offered Being for it; The mighty merchant smiled.

AUTUMN. The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry's cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town.

If anybody's friend be dead, It 's sharpest of the theme The thinking how they walked alive, At such and such a time.

REFUGE. The clouds their backs together laid, The north begun to push, The forests galloped till they fell, The lightning skipped like mice; The thunder crumbled like a stuff -- How good to be safe in tombs, Where nature's temper cannot reach, Nor vengeance ever comes!

The soul should always stand ajar, That if the heaven inquire, He will not be obliged to wait, Or shy of troubling her.

THE BOOK OF MARTYRS. Read, sweet, how others strove, Till we are stouter; What they renounced, Till we are less afraid; How many times they bore The faithful witness, Till we are helped, As if a kingdom cared!

IN THE GARDEN. A bird came down the walk: He did not know I saw; He bit an angle-worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw.

Nature rarer uses yellow Than another hue; Saves she all of that for sunsets, -- Prodigal of blue,

AT LENGTH. Her final summer was it, And yet we guessed it not; If tenderer industriousness Pervaded her, we thought

To my quick ear the leaves conferred; The bushes they were bells; I could not find a privacy From Nature's sentinels.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT. I.

THE BALLOON. You've seen balloons set, haven't you? So stately they ascend It is as swans discarded you For duties diamond.

Far from love the Heavenly Father Leads the chosen child; Oftener through realm of briar Than the meadow mild,

It was too late for man, But early yet for God; Creation impotent to help, But prayer remained our side.

THE CHARIOT. Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality.

APOCALYPSE. I'm wife; I've finished that, That other state; I'm Czar, I'm woman now: It's safer so.

I gained it so, By climbing slow, By catching at the twigs that grow Between the bliss and me. It hung so high, As well the sky Attempt by strategy.

1/2. The poems found here appear as they did when first published posthumously by Todd & Higginson. They are based on the versions found @gutenberg.org. Subsequent publications have restored Dickinson’s idiosyncratic punctuation et al. through close transcription & are not to be missed. See e.g.,

THE RAILWAY TRAIN. I like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up, And stop to feed itself at tanks; And then, prodigious, step

I found the phrase to every thought I ever had, but one; And that defies me, -- as a hand Did try to chalk the sun

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.

I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room.