5 Emily Dickinson poems to read on her birthday
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American poet Emily Dickinson was born 193 years ago, and to celebrate the Deseret News has collected five of her poems to read on her birthday.
Born on Dec. 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson was a prolific writer, though her works went largely unpublished in her lifetime.
Writing perceptively — and with unconventional punctuation — on such themes as death, nature, religion and more, Dickinson endures in her poetry that is just as relevant, and poignant, as it was in the 19th century.
The five poems below were selected to give readers a brief glimpse into the scope and depth of Dickinson’s oeuvre:
On birthdays
Birthday of but a single pang
That there are less to come —
Afflictive is the Adjective
But affluent the doom —
On the power of poetry
I dwell in Possibility —
A fairer House than Prose —
More numerous of Windows —
Superior — for Doors —
Of Chambers as the Cedars —
Impregnable of eye —
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky —
Of Visitors — the fairest —
For Occupation — This —
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise —
On death
Death is the supple Suitor
That wins at last —
It is a stealthy Wooing
Conducted first
By pallid innuendoes
And dim approach
But brave at last with Bugles
And a bisected Coach
It bears away in triumph
To Troth unknown
And Kindred as responsive
As Porcelain.
On pain and letting go
After great pain, a formal feeling comes —
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs —
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round —
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought —
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone —
This is the Hour of Lead —
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow —
First — Chill — then Stupor — then the letting go —
On hope
“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.
Poems were collected from the “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.”
