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These selections from the Laurel Poetry Series edition, by Dell Publishing Co., Inc., copyright © 1960 by Richard Wilbur.
Their source was The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, editor, copyright © 1951, 1955 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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. Ive heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. | Topic: |
text checked (see note) June 2021 |
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye; Much sense the starkest madness. Tis the majority In this, as all, prevails. Assent, and you are sane; Demur,youre straightway dangerous, And handled with a chain. | Topic: |
text checked (see note) February 2023 |
Remorse is memory awake,
Her companies astir, A presence of departed acts At window and at door. Its past set down before the soul, And lighted with a match, Perusal to facilitate Of its condensed despatch. Remorse is cureless,the disease Not even God can heal; For tis His institution, The complement of hell. | Topic: |
text checked (see note) June 2021 |
The heart has narrow banks;
It measures like the sea Its mighty, unremitting bass And blue monotony, Till hurricane bisect, And as itself discerns Its insufficient area, The heart convulsive learns That calm is but a wall Of unattempted gauze An instants push demolishes, A questioning dissolves. | |
text checked (see note) June 2021 |
A loss of something ever felt I.
The first that I could recollect Bereft I was, of what I knew not, Too young that any should suspect A mourner lurked among the children. I notwithstanding stole about As one bemoaning a dominion, Itself the only prince cast out. Elder today, a session wiser And fainter too, as wiseness is I find myself still softly searching For my delinquent palaces, And a suspicion like a finger Touches my forehead now and then, That I am looking oppositely For the site of the kingdom of heaven. | |
text checked (see note) June 2021 |
Estranged from beauty none can be
For beauty is infinity, And power to be finite ceased When fate incorporated us. | |
text checked (see note) June 2021 |