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    Emily Dickinson poems

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    44 views4 pages

    Emily Dickinson Poems

    Uploaded by

    Israa Hamdar

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 4

    1

    Emily Dickinson

    1830 – 1886

     Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, the second
    child of Edward ( 1 8 0 3 - 1 8 7 4 ) and Emily Norcross Dickinson ( 1 8 0 4 - 1882). Dickinson lived
    out her life in only two houses, the spacious but then-divided Dickinson family Homestead where she
    was born, then another large house nearby from 1840 until 1855, when her father bought back the
    entire Homestead. Thereafter she lived in the house where she was born, dying there (of what was
    diagnosed as Bright's disease, followed by a stroke) on May 15, 1886. Her closest friends and lifelong
    allies were her brother, William Austin ( 1 8 2 9 - 1 8 9 5 ) , a year and a half older than she, and her
    sister, Lavinia (Vinnie), who was born in February 1833 and died in 1899.
     Economically, politically, and intellectually, the Dickinsons were among Amherst's most prominent
    families. Edward Dickinson helped found Amherst College as a Calvinistic alternative to the more
    liberal Harvard and Yale, and he was its treasurer for thirty-six years.
     Emily Dickinson attended Amherst Academy from 1840 through 1846, years her biographer Richard
    B. Sewall calls "a blossoming period in her life, full and joyous"; then she spent her year at Mt.
    Holyoke. At eighteen she was formally educated far beyond the level then achieved by most
    Americans, male or female.
     Religion was an essential part of Dickinson's education, and Amherst was nearer to Jonathan
    Edwards's Stockbridge of a century before than it was to the Boston of the 1840s,
     Dickinson's slow triumph over religious fears was intricately involved in her seeing herself as a poet
    and was much aided by the lifelong course of reading on which she embarked once back at home
    after Mt. Holyoke. Of contemporary American writing Dickinson knew the poetry of Longfellow,
    Holmes, and Lowell. She identified wryly with Hawthorne's isolated, gnarled, idiosyncratic
    characters, such as Hepzibah in The House of the Seven Gables. Ralph Waldo Emerson was an
    enduring favorite and a palpable presence, although she did not go next door to meet him when he
    stayed at the Evergreens on a lecture tour in 1857. By the early 1860s she loved Thoreau, recognizing
    a kindred spirit in the independent, nature-loving man who delighted in being the village crank of
    Concord.
     Dickinson's deepest literary debts were to the Bible and to British writers, dead and living. In her
    maturity, through national magazines she subscribed to and books she ordered from Boston, she had
    access to the best British literature of her time within weeks or months, usually, of its publication.
     No one has persuasively traced the precise stages of Dickinson's growth from a conventional
    schoolgirl versifier to one of the greatest American poets. It seems, however, that her originality
    emerged in music before it emerged in verse. Through voice and piano lessons, she became a
    musician good enough to improvise for her family, but often alone, playing softly after the rest of the
    family had retired. Going beyond improvising original melodies on the piano, she began to improvise
    poetry
    2

    The Soul selects her own Society (303)

    The Soul selects her own Society —


    Then — shuts the Door —
    To her divine Majority —
    Present no more —

    Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —


    At her low Gate —
    Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
    Upon her Mat —

    I’ve known her — from an ample nation —


    Choose One —
    Then — close the Valves of her attention —
    Like Stone —

    Much Madness is divinest Sense - (435)

    Much Madness is divinest Sense -


    To a discerning Eye -
    Much Sense - the starkest Madness - 
    ’Tis the Majority 
    In this, as all, prevail -
    Assent - and you are sane -
    Demur - you’re straightway dangerous - 
    And handled with a Chain –

    The Heart asks Pleasure -- first – (536)

    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 privilege to die --
    3

    Apparently with no surprise (1624)

    Apparently with no surprise


    To any happy Flower
    The Frost beheads it at its play -
    In accidental power -
    The blond Assassin passes on -
    The Sun proceeds unmoved
    To Measure off another Day
    For an Approving God.

    Because I could not stop for Death  (712)

    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 labor and my leisure too,
    For His Civility – 

    We passed the School, where Children strove


    At Recess – in the Ring – 
    We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – 
    We passed the Setting Sun – 

    Or rather – He passed us – 


    The Dews drew quivering and chill – 
    For only Gossamer, my Gown – 
    My Tippet – only Tulle – 

    We paused before a House that seemed


    A Swelling of the Ground – 
    The Roof was scarcely visible – 
    The Cornice – in the Ground – 

    Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet


    Feels shorter than the Day
    I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
    Were toward Eternity – 
    4

    I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (280)

    I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,


    And Mourners to and fro
    Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
    That Sense was breaking through – 

    And when they all were seated,


    A Service, like a Drum – 
    Kept beating – beating – till I thought
    My Mind was going numb – 

    And then I heard them lift a Box


    And creak across my Soul
    With those same Boots of Lead, again,
    Then Space – began to toll,

    As all the Heavens were a Bell,


    And Being, but an Ear,
    And I, and Silence, some strange Race
    Wrecked, solitary, here – 

    And then a Plank in Reason, broke,


    And I dropped down, and down – 
    And hit a World, at every plunge,
    And Finished knowing – then – 

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