It quivered through the grass,
And a green chill upon the heat
So ominous did pass
We barred the windows and the doors
As from an emerald ghost ;
The doom's electric moccason
That very instant passed.
On a strange mob of panting trees,
And fences fled away,
And rivers where the houses ran
The living looked that day.
The bell within the steeple wild
The flying tidings whirled.
How much can come
And much can go,
And yet abide the world !
~ Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) Ameican poet.
Preface from Poems, 1890*: "The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called "the Poetry of the Portfolio," ~ something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind."
"a recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father's grounds."
*Thomas Wentworth Higginson. (Higginson with Mabel L. Todd edited and published the firstset of Emily Dickenson's poetry in 1890. "It was hailed as a literary event.")
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| Cover of POEMS |
