Emily Dickinson is a famous and respected American poet, but personally I had great difficulty in properly comprehending the poems.

I didn’t get to read them all, since someone else had reserved this library book, so I wasn’t permitted to renew it.

The poet avails herself of a rich vocabulary, and writes poems about nature, love, life, time and eternity, and death.

Here is one I understood, perhaps the only one:



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.



Here is another:



Beclouded

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,

A travelling flake of snow

Across a barn or through a rut

Debates if it will go.



A narrow wind complains all day

How some one treated him;

Nature, like us, is sometimes caught without her diadem. ( )

(p. 133)

Out of the morning

Will there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like water-lilies?
Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
Oh, some wise men from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called morning lies!