Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete · Emily Dickinson
Chapter 5
Chapter 4 of 146 · 1 min read
Glee! The great storm is over! Four have recovered the land; Forty gone down together Into the boiling sand.
Ring, for the scant salvation! Toll, for the bonnie souls, — Neighbor and friend and bridegroom, Spinning upon the shoals!
How they will tell the shipwreck When winter shakes the door, Till the children ask, "But the forty? Did they come back no more?"
Then a silence suffuses the story, And a softness the teller's eye; And the children no further question, And only the waves reply.
VI.
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.
VII.
ALMOST!
Within my reach! I could have touched! I might have chanced that way! Soft sauntered through the village, Sauntered as soft away! So unsuspected violets Within the fields lie low, Too late for striving fingers That passed, an hour ago.
VIII.
A wounded deer leaps highest, I've heard the hunter tell; 'T is but the ecstasy of death, And then the brake is still.
The smitten rock that gushes, The trampled steel that springs; A cheek is always redder Just where the hectic stings!
Mirth is the mail of anguish, In which it cautions arm, Lest anybody spy the blood And "You're hurt" exclaim!
IX.
The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering;
And then, to go to sleep; And then, if it should be The will of its Inquisitor, The liberty to die.
