Dickinson Series Quotes

After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.

Have you got a brook in your little heart, Where bashful flowers blow, And blushing birds go down to drink, And shadows tremble so?

Who never lost, are unprepared

While I was fearing it, it came,    But came with less of fear, Because that fearing it so long    Had almost made it dear.

IX. The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering; And then, to go to sleep; And then, if it should be The will of its Inquisitor, The liberty to die.

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.

The Ocean’s Heart too Smooth - too Blue - To break for you.

When I hoped I feared, Since I hoped I dared; Everywhere alone As a church remain; Spectre cannot harm, Serpent cannot charm; He deposes doom, Who hath suffered him.

Look back on time with kindly eyes, He doubtless did his best; How softly sinks his trembling sun In human nature's west!

To fight aloud is very brave, But gallanter, I know, Who charge within the bosom, The cavalry of woe.

And if, indeed, I fail, At least to know the worst is sweet. Defeat means nothing but defeat, No drearier can prevail!

My river runs to thee: Blue sea, wilt welcome me? My river waits reply. Oh sea, look graciously! I'll fetch thee brooks From spotted nooks, — Say, sea, Take me!

Life is but life, and death but death! Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath! And if, indeed, I fail, At least to know the worst is sweet. Defeat means nothing but defeat, No drearier can prevail!

The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering; And then, to go to sleep; And then, if it should be The will of its Inquisitor, The liberty to die.

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.

The dying need but little, dear, —    A glass of water's all, A flower's unobtrusive face    To punctuate the wall, A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,    And certainly that one No color in the rainbow    Perceives when you are gone.

The smitten rock that gushes, The trampled steel that springs; A cheek is always redder Just where the hectic stings!

XXXVII. The dying need but little, dear, —    A glass of water's all, A flower's unobtrusive face    To punctuate the wall, A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,    And certainly that one No color in the rainbow    Perceives when you are gone.

XVI. Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the culprit, — Life!

I hide myself within my flower, That wearing on your breast, You, unsuspecting, wear me too — And angels know the rest.

And so, upon this wise I prayed, — Great Spirit, give to me A heaven not so large as yours, But large enough for me.

XXXVII. If I shouldn't be alive When the robins come, Give the one in red cravat A memorial crumb. If I couldn't thank you, Being just asleep, You will know I'm trying With my granite lip!

COBWEBS. The spider as an artist    Has never been employed Though his surpassing merit    Is freely certified By every broom and Bridget    Throughout a Christian land. Neglected son of genius,    I take thee by the hand.

The moon was but a chin of gold    A night or two ago, And now she turns her perfect face    Upon the world below. Her forehead is of amplest blond;    Her cheek like beryl stone; Her eye unto the summer dew    The likest I have known. Her lips of amber never part;    But what must be the smile Upon her friend she could bestow    Were such her silver will! And what a privilege to be    But the remotest star! For certainly her way might pass    Beside your twinkling door. Her bonnet is the firmament,    The universe her shoe, The stars the trinkets at her belt,    Her dimities of blue.

LOVE'S BAPTISM. I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs; The name they dropped upon my face With water, in the country church, Is finished using now, And they can put it with my dolls, My childhood, and the string of spools I've finished threading too. Baptized before without the choice, But this time consciously, of grace Unto supremest name, Called to my full, the crescent dropped, Existence's whole arc filled up With one small diadem. My second rank, too small the first, Crowned, crowing on my father's breast, A half unconscious queen; But this time, adequate, erect, With will to choose or to reject. And I choose — just a throne.

FAREWELL. Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,    Then I am ready to go! Just a look at the horses —    Rapid! That will do! Put me in on the firmest side,    So I shall never fall; For we must ride to the Judgment,    And it's partly down hill. But never I mind the bridges,    And never I mind the sea; Held fast in everlasting race    By my own choice and thee. Good-by to the life I used to live,    And the world I used to know; And kiss the hills for me, just once;    Now I am ready to go!

As if the chart were given.

This is my letter to the world,     That never wrote to me, —

Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.

Hope is the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson said. It perches on our soul. It guides us through the storm. It keeps us warm. She also says it doesn’t ask anything of us.

Pain has an element of blank; It cannot recollect When it began, or if there were A day when it was not.

God gave a loaf to every bird, But just a crumb to me; I dare not eat it, though I starve, — My poignant luxury

A word is dead When it is said,

No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.

I meant to have but modest needs, Such as content, and heaven;

But since the last included both, It would suffice my prayer But just for one to stipulate, And grace would grant the pair.

Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

So unsuspected violets Within the fields lie low, Too late for striving fingers That passed, an hour ago.

If recollecting were forgetting,   Then I remember not; And if forgetting, recollecting,   How near I had forgot! And if to miss were merry,   And if to mourn were gay, How very blithe the fingers   That gathered these to-day!

Who never wanted, — maddest joy   Remains to him unknown: The banquet of abstemiousness   Surpasses that of wine. Within its hope, though yet ungrasped   Desire's perfect goal, No nearer, lest reality   Should disenthrall thy soul.

THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. Pain has an element of blank; It cannot recollect When it began, or if there were A day when it was not. It has no future but itself, Its infinite realms contain Its past, enlightened to perceive New periods of pain.

SUMMER SHOWER. A drop fell on the apple tree, Another on the roof; A half a dozen kissed the eaves, And made the gables laugh. A few went out to help the brook, That went to help the sea. Myself conjectured, Were they pearls, What necklaces could be! The dust replaced in hoisted roads, The birds jocoser sung; The sunshine threw his hat away, The orchards spangles hung. The breezes brought dejected lutes, And bathed them in the glee; The East put out a single flag, And signed the fete away.

XXI. A BOOK. He ate and drank the precious words, His spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, Nor that his frame was dust. He danced along the dingy days, And this bequest of wings Was but a book. What liberty A loosened spirit brings!

REMORSE. Remorse is memory awake, Her companies astir, — A presence of departed acts At window and at door. It's past set down before the soul, And lighted with a match, Perusal to facilitate Of its condensed despatch. Remorse is cureless, — the disease Not even God can heal; For 't is his institution, — The complement of hell.

The show was great: Chuck Berry, Ike and Tina Turner, T. Rex, and finally the Stones.

Modern Mississippi reverberates with human history. Shotgun shacks and silver metal cotton gins go the way of the lowly mule, sexless beast of burden replaced by soulless progress tractor, strip mining the black dirt in parallel lines of row crop conformity, bending the rhythm of the land to the stubborn will of corporate agriculture, evil grandchild of the plantation.

He claimed the Beatles ruined music and refused to play anything recorded after 1960.

We got stiffed on the gig and drove back to Waco in silence. The sun was coming up over the Brazos when we got back to campus. That was the end of my career with Ramsey Horton and the K-otics, but I had learned his Floyd Cramer licks, without which I would not have known what to play on the Rolling Stones’ session in Muscle Shoals.

The Hoke Mosely series by Charles Willeford The Red Right Hand by Joel Townsley Rogers Kill the Boss Goodbye by Peter Rabe The Gravedigger/Coffin Ed series by Chester Himes The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett Interface by Joe Gores The Eighth Circle by Stanley Ellin Sleep and His Brother by Peter Dickinson The Light of Day by Eric Ambler

There are no beautiful women writers.’ ‘Yes there are.’ No there aren’t. Well, except for Edna O’Brien, who is actually a kind of genius and gained my undying admiration when she said plots are for precocious schoolboys (Book 2,738, Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, 7th Series, Secker & Warburg, London). ‘Here, look at Emily Dickinson,’ I said, and showed him the passport-sized photo on the back cover of the Collected Poems. ‘Her face, two prunes in porridge.’ ‘I don’t know, I think she looks nice,’ he said. ‘Nice?’ ‘She does. She looks interesting.’ Reader, pick any Brontë. Any one, doesn’t matter. What do you see? You see intelligence, you see an observer, you see distance, you don’t see beauty.

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.

Then join in hand, brave Americans all, By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall; In so righteous a cause let us hope to succeed, For heaven approves of each generous deed. All ages shall speak with amaze and applause, Of the courage we'll show in support of our laws; To die we can bear- but to serve we disdain, For shame is to freedom more dreadful than pain. This bumper I crown for our Sovereign's health, And this for Britannia's glory and wealth; That wealth and that glory immortal may be, If she is but just and if we are but Free.

EMANCIPATION. No rack can torture me, My soul's at liberty Behind this mortal bone There knits a bolder one You cannot prick with saw, Nor rend with scymitar. Two bodies therefore be; Bind one, and one will flee. The eagle of his nest No easier divest And gain the sky, Than mayest thou, Except thyself may be Thine enemy; Captivity is consciousness, So's liberty.

VIII. Look back on time with kindly eyes, He doubtless did his best; How softly sinks his trembling sun In human nature's west!