"Part I: 1-XXXIII." by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
From: The Single Hound; Poems of a Lifetime. by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). With an introduction by her niece, Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi (1866?-1943).
Boston: Little, Brown, 1914. pp. 3-35.
[Page 3]
THE SINGLE HOUND.
I.
ADVENTURE most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be;
Attended by a Single Hound–
Its own Identity.
[Page 4]
II.
THE Soul that hath a Guest,
Doth seldom go abroad,
Diviner Crowd at home
Obliterate the need,
And courtesy forbid
A Host's departure, when
Upon Himself be visiting
The Emperor of Men!
[Page 5]
III.
EXCEPT the smaller size, no Lives are round,
These hurry to a sphere, and show, and end.
The larger, slower grow, and later hang–
The Summers of Hesperides are long.
[Page 6]
IV.
FAME is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate,
Whose table once a Guest, but not
The second time, is set.
Whose crumbs the crows inspect,
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the Farmer's corn;
Men eat of it and die.
[Page 7]
V.
THE right to perish might be thought
An undisputed right,
Attempt it, and the Universe upon the opposite
Will concentrate its officers–
You cannot even die,
But Nature and Mankind must pause
To pay you scrutiny.
[Page 8]
VI.
PERIL as a possession
'Tis good to bear,
Danger disintegrates satiety;
There's Basis there
Begets an awe,
That searches Human Nature's creases
As clean as Fire.
[Page 9]
VII.
WHEN Etna basks and purrs,
Naples is more afraid
Than when she shows her Garnet Tooth;
Security is loud.
[Page 10]
VIII.
REVERSE cannot befall that fine Prosperity
Whose sources are interior.
As soon Adversity
A diamond overtake,
In far Bolivian ground;
Misfortune hath no implement
Could mar it, if it found.
[Page 11]
IX.
TO be alive is power,
Existence in itself,
Without a further function,
Omnipotence enough.
To be alive and Will–
'Tis able as a God!
The Further of ourselves be what–
Such being Finitude?
[Page 12]
X.
WITCHCRAFT has not a pedigree,
'Tis early as our breath,
And mourners meet it going out
The moment of our death.
[Page 13]
XI.
EXHILARATION is the Breeze
That lifts us from the ground,
And leaves us in another place
Whose statement is not found;
Returns us not, but after time
We soberly descend,
A little newer for the term
Upon enchanted ground.
[Page 14]
XII.
NO romance sold unto,
Could so enthrall a man
As the perusal of
His individual one.
'Tis fiction's, to dilute
To plausibility
Our novel, when 'tis small enough
To credit,–'tis n't true!
[Page 15]
XIII.
IF what we could were what we would–
Criterion be small;
It is the Ultimate of talk
The impotence to tell.
[Page 16]
XIV.
PERCEPTION of an
Object costs
Precise the Object's loss.
Perception in itself a gain
Replying to its price;
The Object Absolute is nought,
Perception sets it fair,
And then upbraids a Perfectness
That situates so far.
[Page 17]
XV.
NO other can reduce
Our mortal consequence,
Like the remembering it be nought
A period from hence.
But contemplation for
Cotemporaneous nought
Our single competition;
Jehovah's estimate.
[Page 18]
XVI.
THE blunder is to estimate,–
"Eternity is Then,"
We say, as of a station.
Meanwhile he is so near,
He joins me in my ramble,
Divides abode with me,
No friend have I that so persists
As this Eternity.
[Page 19]
XVII.
MY Wheel is in the dark,–
I cannot see a spoke,
Yet know its dripping feet
Go round and round.
My foot is on the tide–
An unfrequented road,
Yet have all roads
A "clearing" at the end.
Some have resigned the Loom,
Some in the busy tomb
Find quaint employ,
Some with new, stately feet
Pass royal through the gate,
Flinging the problem back at you and I.
[Page 20]
XVIII.
THERE is another Loneliness
That many die without,
Not want or friend occasions it,
Or circumstances or lot.
But nature sometimes, sometimes thought,
And whoso it befall
Is richer than could be divulged
By mortal numeral.
[Page 21]
XIX.
SO gay a flower bereaved the mind
As if it were a woe,
Is Beauty an affliction, then?
Tradition ought to know.
[Page 22]
XX.
GLORY is that bright tragic thing,
That for an instant
Means Dominion,
Warms some poor name
That never felt the sun,
Gently replacing
In oblivion.
[Page 23]
XXI.
THE missing All prevented me
From missing minor things.
If nothing larger than a World's
Departure from a hinge,
Or Sun's extinction be observed,
'Twas not so large that I
Could lift my forehead from my work
For curiosity.
[Page 24]
XXII.
HIS mind, of man a secret makes,
I meet him with a start,
He carries a circumference
In which I have no part,
Or even if I deem I do–
He otherwise may know.
Impregnable to inquest,
However neighborly.
[Page 25]
XXIII.
THE suburbs of a secret
A strategist should keep,
Better than on a dream intrude
To scrutinize the sleep.
[Page 26]
XXIV.
THE difference between despair
And fear, is like the one
Between the instant of a wreck,
And when the wreck has been.
The mind is smooth,–no motion–
Contented as the eye
Upon the forehead of a Bust,
That knows it cannot see.
[Page 27]
XXV.
THERE is a solitude of space,
A solitude of sea,
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be,
Compared with that profounder site,
That polar privacy,
A Soul admitted to Itself:
Finite Infinity.
[Page 28]
XXVI.
THE props assist the house
Until the house is built,
And then the props withdraw–
And adequate, erect,
The house supports itself;
Ceasing to recollect
The auger and the carpenter.
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected life,
A past of plank and nail,
And slowness,–then the scaffolds drop–
Affirming it a soul.
[Page 29]
XXVII.
THE gleam of an heroic act,
Such strange illumination–
The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination!
[Page 30]
XXVIII.
OF Death the sharpest function,
That, just as we discern,
The Excellence defies us;
Securest gathered then
The fruit perverse to plucking,
But leaning to the sight
With the ecstatic limit
Of unobtained Delight.
[Page 31]
XXIX.
DOWN Time's quaint stream
Without an oar,
We are enforced to sail,
Our Port–a secret–
Our Perchance–a gale.
What Skipper would
Incur the risk,
What Buccaneer would ride,
Without a surety from the wind
Or schedule of the tide?
[Page 32]
XXX.
I BET with every Wind that blew, till Nature in chagrin
Employed a Fact to visit me and scuttle my Balloon!
[Page 33]
XXXI.
THE Future never spoke,
Nor will he, like the Dumb,
Reveal by sign or syllable
Of his profound To-come.
But when the news be ripe,
Presents it in the Act–
Forestalling preparation
Escape or substitute.
Indifferent to him
The Dower as the Doom,
His office but to execute
Fate's Telegram to him.
[Page 34]
XXXII.
TWO lengths has every day,
Its absolute extent–
And area superior
By hope or heaven lent.
Eternity will be
Velocity, or pause,
At fundamental signals
From fundamental laws.
To die, is not to go–
On doom's consummate chart
No territory new is staked,
Remain thou as thou art.
[Page 35]
XXXIII.
THE Soul's superior instants
Occur to Her alone,
When friend and earth's occasion
Have infinite withdrawn.
Or she, Herself, ascended
To too remote a height,
For lower recognition
Than Her Omnipotent.
This mortal abolition
Is seldom, but as fair
As Apparition–subject
To autocratic air.
Eternity's disclosure
To favorites, a few,
Of the Colossal substance
Of immortality.
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