“I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They ’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the liv...”
Work
This comprehensive and authoritative collection of all 1,775 poems by Emily Dickinson is an essential volume for all lovers of American literature.<br/><br/>Only eleven of Emily Dickinson's poems were published prior to her death in 1886; the startling originality of her work doomed it to obscurity in her lifetime. Early posthumous published collections — some of them featuring liberally "edited" versions of the poems — did not fully and accurately represent Dickinson's bold experiments in prosody, her tragic vision, and the range of her intellectual and emotional explorations. Not until the 1955 publication of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, a three-volume critical edition compiled by Thomas H. Johnson, were readers able for the first time to assess, understand, and appreciate the whole of Dickinson's extraordinary poetic genius.<br/><br/>This book, a distillation of the three-volume Complete Poems, brings together the original texts of all 1,775 poems that Emily Dickinson wrote.<br/><br/>"With its chronological arrangement of the poems, this volume becomes more than just a collection; it is at the same time a poetic biography of the thoughts and feelings of a woman whose beauty was deep and lasting." —San Francisco Chronicle
Quotes
Showing 1-21 of 21
Emily Dickinson
Canonical work source
“I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They ’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the liv...”
“A Word is Dead A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.”
“One need not be a chamber to be haunted.”
“The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride, Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide, Earth a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true, And Earth is quite coquettish, an...”
“In a serener Bright, In a more golden light I see Each little doubt and fear, Each little discord here Removed.”
“Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn Indicative that suns go down; The notice to the startled grass That darkness is about to pass.”
“Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell.”
“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.”
“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 cou...”
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
“Not with a club, the Heart is broken Nor with a Stone – A Whip so small you could not see it I've known”
“We never know we go,—when we are going We jest and shut the door; Fate following behind us bolts it, And we accost no more.”
“To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie— True Poems flee—”
“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind— As if my Brain had split— I tried to match it—Seam by Seam— But could not make it fit. The thought behind, I strove to join Unto the thought before— But Sequenc...”
“I stepped from Plank to Plank So slow and cautiously The Stars about my Head I felt, About my Feet the Sea. I knew not but the next Would be my final inch — This gave me that precarious Gait...”
“A precious, mouldering pleasure ’t is To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think.”
“A precious, mouldering pleasure ’tis To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think, His venerable hand to take, And warming in our own, A passage back, or...”
“Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.”
“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind— As if my Brain had split— I tried to match it—Seam by Seam— But could not make it fit.”
“Much Madness Is Divinest Sense Much Madness is divinest Sense — To a discerning Eye — Much Sense — the starkest Madness — 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail — Assent — and you are sa...”
“A charm invests a face Imperfectly beheld,— The lady dare not lift her veil For fear it be dispelled. But peers beyond her mesh, And wishes, and denies,— Lest interview annul a want That ima...”