Free The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Emily Dickinson

the little bird,
Who knows but she would tell?
     
    I think I won‘t, however,
It’s finer not to know;
If summer were an axiom,
What sorcery had snow?
     
    So keep your secret, Father!
I would not, if I could,
Know what the sapphire fellows do,
In your new-fashioned world!

XVII
    WHO robbed the woods,
The trusting woods?
The unsuspecting trees
Brought out their burrs and mosses
His fantasy to please.
He scanned their trinkets, curious,
He grasped, he bore away.
What will the solemn hemlock,
What will the fir-tree say?

XVIII
    Two butterflies went out at noon
And waltzed above a stream.
Then stepped straight through the firmament
And rested on a beam;
     
    And then together bore away
Upon a shining sea,—
Though never yet, in any port,
Their coming mentioned be.
     
    If spoken by the distant bird,
If met in ether sea
By frigate or by merchantman,
Report was not to me.

XIX
    I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me,
     
    And frigates in the upper floor
Extended hempen 89 hands,
Presuming me to be a mouse
Aground, upon the sands.
     
    But no man moved me till the tide
Went past my simple shoe,
And past my apron and my belt,
And past my bodice too,
     
    And made as he would eat me up
As wholly as a dew
Upon a dandelion’s sleeve—
And then I started too.
     
    And he—he followed close behind;
I felt his silver heel
Upon my ankle,—then my shoes
Would overflow with pearl.
     
    Until we met the solid town,
No man he seemed to know;
And bowing with a mighty look
At me, the sea withdrew.

XX
    ARCTURUS 90 is his other name,—
I’d rather call him star!
It’s so unkind of science
To go and interfere!
     
    I pull a flower from the woods,—
A monster with a glass
Computes the stamens in a breath,
And has her in a class.
     
    Whereas I took the butterfly
Aforetime in my hat,
He sits erect in cabinets,
The clover-bells forgot.
     
    What once was heaven, is zenith now.
Where I proposed to go
When time’s brief masquerade was done,
Is mapped, and charted too!
     
    What if the poles should frisk about
And stand upon their heads!
I hope I’m ready for the worst,
Whatever prank betides! 91
     
    Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven’s changed!
I hope the children there
Won’t be new-fashioned when I come,
And laugh at me, and stare!
    I hope the father in the skies
Will lift his little girl,-
Old-fashioned, naughty, everything,—
Over the stile 92 of pearl!

XXI
    AN awful tempest mashed the air,
The clouds were gaunt and few;
A black, as of a spectre’s cloak,
Hid heaven and earth from view.
     
    The creatures chuckled on the roofs
And whistled in the air,
And shook their fists and gnashed their teeth,
And swung their frenzied hair.
     
    The morning lit, the birds arose;
The monster’s faded eyes
Turned slowly to his native coast,
And peace was Paradise!

XXII
    AN everywhere of silver,
With ropes of sand
To keep it from effacing
The track called land.

XIII
    A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm 93 in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
    And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.
     
    He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,—
They looked like frightened beads, I thought
He stirred his velvet head
     
    Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home
     
    Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, 94 as they swim.

XXIV
    A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,—did you not?
His notice sudden is.
     
    The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.
     
    He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,
     
    Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,-
When, stooping to secure it,
It