VI ~  Emily Dickinson

Besides the autumn poets sing,

A few prosaic days

A little this side of the snow

And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,

A few ascetic eves, ~

Gone Mr. Bryant's goldenrod,

And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.

Still is the bustle in the brook,
Sealed are the spicy valves;
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The eyes of many elves.

Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear!

IV

 

An altered look about the hills;

A Tyrian light the village fills;

A wider sunrise in the dawn;

A deeper twilight on the lawn;

A print of a vermilion foot;

A purple finger on the slope;

A flippant fly upon the pane;

A spider at his trade again;

An added strut in chanticleer;

A flower expected everywhere;

An axe shrill singing in the woods;

Fern-odors on untraveled roads,~

All this, and more I cannot tell,

A furtive look you know as well,

And Nicodemus' mystery

Receives its annual reply.

Emily Dickinson often included poems in her correspondence with friends; however, it was not until after her death in 1886 that her sister, Lavinia, discovered the extent of Emily's writing.  A box of hundreds of poems organized into packets of four, five, or six sheets of folded stationery was hidden away.  It became Lavinia's ambition to have the work published.  Emily's poems did not conform to the nineteenth-century notion of poetry ~ verse that adhered to regular meter and rhyme.
 ~ Emily Dickinson Selected Poems, Gramercy Books,   1993.