Book Sampler: Poetry (2 of 19)
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Poems by Emily Dickinson
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, -- you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.-----
The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.-----
There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.None may teach it anything,
'T is the seal, despair, --
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.-----
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 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 't is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.-----
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.
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Book Sampler: Poetry
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