A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!

A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!
Your prayers, oh Passer by!
From such a common ball as this
Might date a Victory!
From marshallings as simple
The flags of nations swang.
Steady — my soul: What issues
Upon thine arrow hang!

Emily Dickinson

The bustle in the house

Για τον Κοσμά

The bustle in a house

The morning after death

Is solemnest of industries

Enacted upon earth.

The sweeping up the heart

And putting love away

We shall not want to use again

Until eternity.

Emily Dickinson

Τρία τετράστιχα για την μαγεία

Witchcraft was hung, in History,

But History and I

Find all the Witchcraft that we need

Around us, every Day –

———

Witchcraft has not a Pedigree
‘Tis early as our Breath
And mourners meet it going out
The moment of our death—

———-

Best Witchcraft is Geometry
To the magician’s mind –
His ordinary acts are feats
To thinking of mankind.

Emily Dickinson

There is a certain slant of light

There is a certain slant of light

Originally uploaded by Muffet

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,
‘Tis the seal, despair,–
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ’tis like the distance
On the look of death.

Emily Dickinson

Hope

Least flycatcher … {}
Originally uploaded by dotlyc

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

Emily Dickinson

Wild nights!–wild nights!

Wild nights–wild nights!

Were I with thee

Wild nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile the winds

To a heart in port–

Done with the compass,

Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden–

Ah, the sea!

Might I moor, tonight,

In thee!

 

Emily Dickinson

I’m nobody! Who are you?

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Emily Dickinson

The heart asks pleasure first

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 liberty to die.

Emily Dickinson