Emily Dickinson

Experience is the Angled Road
Preferred against the Mind
By — Paradox — the Mind itself —
Presuming it to lead

Quite Opposite — How Complicate
The Discipline of Man —
Compelling Him to Choose Himself
His Preappointed Pain —
-Emily Dickinson

Experiment escorts us last –
His pungent company
Will not allow an Axiom
An Opportunity
-Emily Dickinson

Experiment to me
Is every one I meet
If it contain a Kernel?
The Figure of a Nut

Presents upon a Tree
Equally plausibly,
But Meat within, is requisite
To Squirrels, and to Me.
-Emily Dickinson

Extol thee — could I? Then I will
By saying nothing new —
But just the truest truth
That thou art heavenly.

Perceiving thee is evidence
That we are of the sky
Partaking thee a guaranty
Of immortality
-Emily Dickinson

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses — past the headlands —
Into deep Eternity —

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?
-Emily Dickinson

Facts by our side are never sudden
Until they look around
And then they scare us like a spectre
Protruding from the Ground —

The height of our portentous Neighbor
We never know —
Till summoned to his recognition
By an Adieu —

Adieu for whence
The sage cannot conjecture
The bravest die
As ignorant of their resumption
As you or I —
-Emily Dickinson

Fairer through Fading — as the Day
Into the Darkness dips away —
Half Her Complexion of the Sun —
Hindering — Haunting — Perishing —

Rallies Her Glow, like a dying Friend —
Teasing with glittering Amend —
Only to aggravate the Dark
Through an expiring — perfect — look —
-Emily Dickinson

Faith — is the Pierless Bridge
Supporting what We see
Unto the Scene that We do not —
Too slender for the eye

It bears the Soul as bold
As it were rocked in Steel
With Arms of Steel at either side —
It joins — behind the Veil

To what, could We presume
The Bridge would cease to be
To Our far, vacillating Feet
A first Necessity.

“Faith” is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see —
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
-Emily Dickinson

Falsehood of Thee could I suppose
‘Twould undermine the Sill
To which my Faith pinned Block by Block
Her Cedar Citadel.
-Emily Dickinson

Fame is a bee.
It has a song —
It has a sting —
Ah, too, it has a wing.
-Emily Dickinson

Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the
Farmer’s Corn —
Men eat of it and die.
-Emily Dickinson

Fame is the one that does not stay —
Its occupant must die
Or out of sight of estimate
Ascend incessantly —
Or be that most insolvent thing
A Lightning in the Germ —
Electrical the embryo
But we demand the Flame
-Emily Dickinson

Fame is the tine that Scholars leave
Upon their Setting Names —
The Iris not of Occident
That disappears as comes —
-Emily Dickinson

Fame of Myself, to justify,
All other Plaudit be
Superfluous — An Incense
Beyond Necessity —

Fame of Myself to lack — Although
My Name be else Supreme —
This were an Honor honorless —
A futile Diadem —
-Emily Dickinson

Fame’s Boys and Girls, who never die
And are too seldom born –
-Emily Dickinson

Far from Love the Heavenly Father
Leads the Chosen Child,
Oftener through Realm of Briar
Than the Meadow mild.

Oftener by the Claw of Dragon
Than the Hand of Friend
Guides the Little One predestined
To the Native Land.
-Emily Dickinson

Fate slew Him, but He did not drop —
She felled — He did not fall —
Impaled Him on Her fiercest stakes —
He neutralized them all —

She stung Him — sapped His firm Advance —
But when Her Worst was done
And He — unmoved regarded Her —
Acknowledged Him a Man.
-Emily Dickinson

Few, yet enough,
Enough is One –
To that ethereal throng
Have not each one of us the right
To stealthily belong?
-Emily Dickinson

Finding is the first Act
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The “Golden Fleece”

Fourth, no Discovery —
Fifth, no Crew —
Finally, no Golden Fleece —
Jason — sham — too.

-Emily Dickinson

Finite – to fail, but infinite to Venture –
For the one ship that struts the shore
Many’s the gallant – overwhelmed Creature
Nodding in Navies nevermore –
-Emily Dickinson

Fitter to see Him, I may be
For the long Hindrance — Grace — to Me —
With Summers, and with Winters, grow,
Some passing Year — A trait bestow

To make Me fairest of the Earth —
The Waiting — then — will seem so worth
I shall impute with half a pain
The blame that I was chosen — then —

Time to anticipate His Gaze —
It’s first — Delight — and then — Surprise

Floss won’t save you from an Abyss
But a Rope will —
Notwithstanding a Rope for a Souvenir
Is not beautiful —

But I tell you every step is a Trough –
And every stop a Well —
Now will you have the Rope or the Floss?
Prices reasonable —
-Emily Dickinson

Flowers — Well — if anybody
Can the ecstasy define —
Half a transport — half a trouble —
With which flowers humble men:
Anybody find the fountain
From which floods so contra flow —
I will give him all the Daisies
Which upon the hillside blow.

Too much pathos in their faces
For a simple breast like mine —
Butterflies from St. Domingo
Cruising round the purple line —
Have a system of aesthetics —
Far superior to mine.

Follow wise Orion
Till you waste your Eye —
Dazzlingly decamping
He is just as high –
-Emily Dickinson