Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886).

i. “479”.

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.   

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,        5

And I had put away

My labor, and my leisure too,

For his civility.   

We passed the school where children played

At wrestling in a ring;        10

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.   

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,        15

The cornice but a mound.   

Since then 't is centuries; but each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity.        20

ii. “598”.

The brain is wider than the sky,   

For, put them side by side,

The one the other will include   

With ease, and you beside.   

The brain is deeper than the sea,        5   

For, hold them, blue to blue,

The one the other will absorb,   

As sponges, buckets do.   

The brain is just the weight of God,   

For, lift them, pound for pound,        10

And they will differ, if they do,   

As syllable from sound.

iii. “656”.

I started early, took my dog,

And visited the sea;

The mermaids in the basement

Came out to look at me,   

And frigates in the upper floor        5

Extended hempen hands,

Presuming me to be a mouse

Aground, upon the sands.   

But no man moved me till the tide

Went past my simple shoe,        10

And past my apron and my belt,

And past my bodice too,   

And made as he would eat me up

As wholly as a dew

Upon a dandelion's sleeve—        15

And then I started too.   

And he—he followed close behind;

I felt his silver heel

Upon my ankle,—then my shoes

Would overflow with pearl.        20   

Until we met the solid town,

No man he seemed to know;

And bowing with a mighty look

At me, the sea withdrew.

iv. “1096”.

A narrow fellow in the grass

Occasionally rides;

You may have met him,—did you not?

His notice sudden is.   

The grass divides as with a comb,        5

A spotted shaft is seen;

And then it closes at your feet

And opens further on.   

He likes a boggy acre,

A floor too cool for corn.        10

Yet when a child, and barefoot,

I more than once, at morn,   

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash

Unbraiding in the sun,—

When, stooping to secure it,        15

It wrinkled, and was gone.   

Several of nature's people

I know, and they know me;

I feel for them a transport

Of cordiality;        20   

But never met this fellow,

Attended or alone,

Without a tighter breathing,

And zero at the bone.

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