Poetry of the Week: Emily Dickinson

Poetry is something to celebrate with, to sooth and relax and wake up the dreaming part of the brain that mundane troubles force dormant, but it's also a friend to turn to in troubled times. "Hope is the thing with feathers" was my first favorite poem, and the notebooks of my childhood have it scattered through them like leaves.

I forgot about Emily Dickinson for too long after that. But here are a few of her words to start to make up for it.

Love is anterior to life
Love is anterior to life,  
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and  
The exponent of breath.

Each life converges to some centre
Each life converges to some centre
Expressed or still;
Exists in every human nature
A goal,  

Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be,        
Too fair
For credibility’s temerity
To dare.  

Adored with caution, as a brittle heaven,
To reach   
Were hopeless as the rainbow’s raiment
To touch,  

Yet persevered toward, surer for the distance;
How high
Unto the saints’ slow diligence        
The sky!  

Ungained, it may be, by a life’s low venture,
But then,
Eternity enables the endeavoring
Again.

Hope is the thing with feathers
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 could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.  

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;     
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

A wounded deer leaps highest
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 caution arm,        
Lest anybody spy the blood
And “You ’re hurt” exclaim!