Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete · Emily Dickinson
Chapter 23
Chapter 132 of 146 · 1 min read
THE BALLOON.
You've seen balloons set, haven't you? So stately they ascend It is as swans discarded you For duties diamond.
Their liquid feet go softly out Upon a sea of blond; They spurn the air as 't were too mean For creatures so renowned.
Their ribbons just beyond the eye, They struggle some for breath, And yet the crowd applauds below; They would not encore death.
The gilded creature strains and spins, Trips frantic in a tree, Tears open her imperial veins And tumbles in the sea.
The crowd retire with an oath The dust in streets goes down, And clerks in counting-rooms observe, ''T was only a balloon.'
XXIV.
EVENING.
The cricket sang, And set the sun, And workmen finished, one by one, Their seam the day upon.
The low grass loaded with the dew, The twilight stood as strangers do With hat in hand, polite and new, To stay as if, or go.
A vastness, as a neighbor, came, — A wisdom without face or name, A peace, as hemispheres at home, — And so the night became.
XXV.
COCOON.
Drab habitation of whom? Tabernacle or tomb, Or dome of worm, Or porch of gnome, Or some elf's catacomb?
XXVI.
SUNSET.
A sloop of amber slips away Upon an ether sea, And wrecks in peace a purple tar, The son of ecstasy.
