This page (first lines):
| Category:
| index pages:
|
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. I’ve 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,—you’re 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 instant’s 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 | |