Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830–86) was an American lyric poet. She played a leading role in redefining modern verse. She wrote 1775 short lyrics; only seven were published during her life, none with her consent.
Particulars of Dickinson’s life are as perplexing as some of her poems. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickenson was vigorous, witty, and outgoing during her early years. However, in her mid-twenties, she gradually withdrew into an inner world and ultimately refused to leave her home. She lived with her unmarried sister Lavinia in “The Homestead.” Emily read voraciously and exchanged letters with a small circle of friends.
Dickinson’s reclusive life and her inner struggles are reflected in her mystical poems. She referred to herself as “The Queen of Calvary” and wrote in an elliptical language, with great stress on assonance and alliteration than rhyme. Her verse is full of references to storms, shipwrecks, volcanoes, funerals, imprisonments, and other expressions of natural and human ferocity.
Today, Dickenson’s lyrical poetry ranks among the most significant works in American literature. Poems by Emily Dickinson appeared in 1890. A complete scholarly edition of her works first appeared only in 1955. A facsimile of her manuscripts was published in The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (1982.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Emily Dickinson
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Words
That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Carpe-diem
Superiority to fate is difficult to gain; ’tis not conferred of any, but possible to earn.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Fortune, Luck
Success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed.
—Emily Dickinson
One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Memory
I’ll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Light
Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Last Words
I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Love
The Gleam of an heroic act,
Such strange illumination—
The Possible’s slow fuse it lit
By the Imagination.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Imagination, Possibilities
To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: The Present, Present, Living, Time, Life
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
The Carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Death, Death and Dying
The mere sense of living is joy enough.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Blessings, Happiness
How the old mountains drip with sunset,
And the brake of dun!
How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
By the wizard sun!
How the old steeples hand the scarlet,
Till the ball is full,—
Have I the lip of the flamingo
That I dare to tell?
Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,
Touching all the grass
With a departing, sapphire feature,
As if a duchess pass!
How a small dusk crawls on the village
Till the houses blot;
And the odd flambeaux no men carry
Glimmer on the spot!
Now it is night in nest and kennel,
And where was the wood,
Just a dome of abyss is nodding
Into solitude!—
These are the visions baffled Guido;
Titian never told;
Domenichino dropped the pencil,
Powerless to unfold.
—Emily Dickinson
The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Experience
Faith is the pierless bridge supporting what we see unto the scene that we do not.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Faith
He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Reading, Books
This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Snow
I dwell in Possibility
A fairer House than Prose
More numerous of Windows
Superior—for Doors
Of Chambers as the Cedars
Impregnable of Eye
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky
Of Visitors—the fairest
For Occupation—This
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Potential
A letter always seemed to me like Immortality, for is it not the Mind alone, without corporeal friend?
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Letters
His labour is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Action, Wisdom, Idleness, Failure
Drab Habitation of Whom? Tabernacle or Tomb—or Dome of Worm—or Porch of Gnome—or some Elf’s Catacomb?
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Home
Great Spirit, give to me a heaven not so large as yours but large enough for me.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Heaven
A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Sanity
Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Bravery, Failure, Boldness
To fight aloud is very brave, but gallanter, I know, who charge within the bosom, the Cavalry of Woe.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Sadness, Sorrow
Assent—and you are sane—, demur—you’re straightway dangerous—, and handled with a Chain—.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Dissent
Sunrise: day’s great progenitor.
—Emily Dickinson
He disposes Doom who hath suffered him.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity
If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Poets, Art, Poetry
I hope you love birds, too. It is economical. It saves going to Heaven.
—Emily Dickinson
Topics: Birds
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