Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete

by Emily Dickinson

Index of First Lines

[A bird came down the walk:]
[A charm invests a face]
[A clock stopped — not the mantel's;]
[A death-blow is a life-blow to some]
[A deed knocks first at thought,]
[A dew sufficed itself]
[A door just opened on a street —]
[A drop fell on the apple tree,]
[A face devoid of love or grace,]
[A lady red upon the hill]
[A light exists in spring]
[A little road not made of man,]
[A long, long sleep, a famous sleep]
[A modest lot, a fame petite,]
[A murmur in the trees to note,]
[A narrow fellow in the grass]
[A poor torn heart, a tattered heart,]
[A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is]
[A route of evanescence]
[A sepal, petal, and a thorn]
[A shady friend for torrid days]
[A sickness of this world it most occasions]
[A sloop of amber slips away]
[A solemn thing it was, I said,]
[A something in a summer's day,]
[A spider sewed at night]
[A thought went up my mind to-day]
[A throe upon the features]
[A toad can die of light!]
[A word is dead]
[A wounded deer leaps highest,]
[Adrift! A little boat adrift!]
[Afraid? Of whom am I afraid?]
[After a hundred years]
[All overgrown by cunning moss,]
[Alter? When the hills do.]
[Ample make this bed.]
[An altered look about the hills;]
[An awful tempest mashed the air,]
[An everywhere of silver,]
[Angels in the early morning]
[Apparently with no surprise]
[Arcturus is his other name, —]
[Are friends delight or pain?]
[As by the dead we love to sit,]
[As children bid the guest good-night,]
[As far from pity as complaint,]
[As if some little Arctic flower,]
[As imperceptibly as grief]
[Ashes denote that fire was;]
[At half-past three a single bird]
[At last to be identified!]
[At least to pray is left, is left.]
[Because I could not stop for Death,]
[Before I got my eye put out,]
[Before the ice is in the pools,]
[Before you thought of spring,]
[Belshazzar had a letter, —]
[Bereaved of all, I went abroad,]
[Besides the autumn poets sing,]
[Blazing in gold and quenching in purple,]
[Bless God, he went as soldiers,]
[Bring me the sunset in a cup,]
[Come slowly, Eden!]
[Could I but ride indefinite,]
[Could mortal lip divine]
[Dare you see a soul at the white heat?]
[Dear March, come in!]
[Death is a dialogue between]
[Death is like the insect]
[Death sets a thing significant]
[Delayed till she had ceased to know,]
[Delight becomes pictorial]
[Departed to the judgment,]
[Did the harebell loose her girdle]
[Doubt me, my dim companion!]
[Drab habitation of whom?]
[Drowning is not so pitiful]
[Each life converges to some centre]
[Each that we lose takes part of us;]
[Elysium is as far as to]
[Essential oils are wrung:]
[Except the heaven had come so near,]
[Except to heaven, she is nought;]
[Experiment to me]
[Exultation is the going]
[Far from love the Heavenly Father]
[Farther in summer than the birds,]
[Fate slew him, but he did not drop;]
[Father, I bring thee not myself, —]
[Few get enough, — enough is one;]
[Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.]
[For each ecstatic instant]
[Forbidden fruit a flavor has]
[Frequently the woods are pink,]
[From all the jails the boys and girls]
[From cocoon forth a butterfly]
[From us she wandered now a year,]
[Given in marriage unto thee,]
[Glee! The great storm is over!]
[God gave a loaf to every bird,]
[God made a little gentian;]
[God permits industrious angels]
[Going to heaven!]
["Going to him! Happy letter! Tell him —]
[Good night! which put the candle out?]
[Great streets of silence led away]
[Have you got a brook in your little heart,]
[He ate and drank the precious words,]
[He fumbles at your spirit]
[He preached upon "breadth" till it argued him narrow, —]
[He put the belt around my life, —]
[He touched me, so I live to know]
[Heart not so heavy as mine,]
[Heart, we will forget him!]
[Heaven is what I cannot reach!]
[Her final summer was it,]
[High from the earth I heard a bird;]
[His bill an auger is,]
[Hope is a subtle glutton;]
[Hope is the thing with feathers]
[How dare the robins sing,]
[How happy is the little stone]
[How many times these low feet staggered,]
[How still the bells in steeples stand,]
[How the old mountains drip with sunset,]
[I asked no other thing,]
[I breathed enough to learn the trick,]
[I bring an unaccustomed wine]
[I can wade grief,]
[I cannot live with you,]
[I died for beauty, but was scarce]
[I dreaded that first robin so,]
[I envy seas whereon he rides,]
[I felt a clearing in my mind]
[I felt a funeral in my brain,]
[I found the phrase to every thought]
[I gained it so,]
[I gave myself to him,]
[I had a daily bliss]
[I had a guinea golden;]
[I had been hungry all the years;]
[I had no cause to be awake,]
[I had no time to hate, because]
[I have a king who does not speak;]
[I have no life but this,]
[I have not told my garden yet,]
[I heard a fly buzz when I died;]
[I held a jewel in my fingers]
[I hide myself within my flower,]
[I know a place where summer strives]
[I know some lonely houses off the road]
[I know that he exists]
[I like a look of agony,]
[I like to see it lap the miles,]
[I live with him, I see his face;]
[I lived on dread; to those who know]
[I lost a world the other day.]
[I many times thought peace had come,]
[I meant to find her when I came;]
[I meant to have but modest needs,]
[I measure every grief I meet]
[I never hear the word "escape"]
[I never lost as much but twice,]
[I never saw a moor,]
[I noticed people disappeared,]
[I read my sentence steadily,]
[I reason, earth is short,]
[I shall know why, when time is over,]
[I should have been too glad, I see,]
[I should not dare to leave my friend,]
[I sing to use the waiting,]
[I started early, took my dog,]
[I stepped from plank to plank]
[I taste a liquor never brewed,]
[I think just how my shape will rise]
[I think the hemlock likes to stand]
[I took my power in my hand.]
[I went to heaven, —]
[I went to thank her,]
[I wish I knew that woman's name,]
[I wonder if the sepulchre]
[I worked for chaff, and earning wheat]
[I years had been from home,]
[I'll tell you how the sun rose, —]
[I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs;]
[I'm nobody! Who are you?]
[I'm wife; I've finished that,]
[I've got an arrow here;]
[I've seen a dying eye]
[If I can stop one heart from breaking,]
[If I may have it when it's dead]
[If I should die,]
[If I shouldn't be alive]
[If anybody's friend be dead,]
[If recollecting were forgetting,]
[If the foolish call them 'flowers,']
[If tolling bell I ask the cause.]
[If you were coming in the fall,]
[Immortal is an ample word]
[In lands I never saw, they say,]
[Is Heaven a physician?]
[Is bliss, then, such abyss]
[It can't be summer, — that got through;]
[It dropped so low in my regard]
[It is an honorable thought,]
[It makes no difference abroad,]
[It might be easier]
[It sifts from leaden sieves,]
[It sounded as if the streets were running,]
[It struck me every day]
[It tossed and tossed, —]
[It was not death, for I stood up,]
[It was too late for man,]
[It's like the light, —]
[It's such a little thing to weep,]
[Just lost when I was saved!]
[Lay this laurel on the one]
[Let down the bars, O Death!]
[Let me not mar that perfect dream]
[Life, and Death, and Giants]
[Like mighty footlights burned the red]
[Like trains of cars on tracks of plush]
[Look back on time with kindly eyes,]
[Love is anterior to life,]
[Me! Come! My dazzled face]
[Mine by the right of the white election!]
[Mine enemy is growing old, —]
[Morning is the place for dew,]
[Morns like these we parted;]
[Much madness is divinest sense]
[Musicians wrestle everywhere:]
[My cocoon tightens, colors tease,]
[My country need not change her gown,]
[My friend must be a bird,]
[My life closed twice before its close;]
[My river runs to thee:]
[My worthiness is all my doubt,]
[Nature rarer uses yellow]
[Nature, the gentlest mother,]
[New feet within my garden go,]
[No brigadier throughout the year]
[No rack can torture me,]
[Not any higher stands the grave]
[Not in this world to see his face]
[Not knowing when the dawn will come]
[Not with a club the heart is broken,]
[Of all the souls that stand create]
[Of all the sounds despatched abroad,]
[Of bronze and blaze]
[Of tribulation these are they]
[On such a night, or such a night,]
[On the bleakness of my lot]
[On this long storm the rainbow rose,]
[On this wondrous sea,]
[One blessing had I, than the rest]
[One day is there of the series]
[One dignity delays for all,]
[One need not be a chamber to be haunted,]
[One of the ones that Midas touched,]
[Our journey had advanced;]
[Our lives are Swiss, —]
[Our share of night to bear,]
[Pain has an element of blank;]
[Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower?]
[Pigmy seraphs gone astray,]
[Pink, small, and punctual,]
[Pompless no life can pass away;]
[Poor little heart!]
[Portraits are to daily faces]
[Prayer is the little implement]
[Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn]
[Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,]
[Read, sweet, how others strove,]
[Remembrance has a rear and front, —]
[Remorse is memory awake,]
[Safe in their alabaster chambers,]
[She died, — this was the way she died;]
[She laid her docile crescent down,]
[She rose to his requirement, dropped]
[She slept beneath a tree]
[She sweeps with many-colored brooms,]
[She went as quiet as the dew]
[Sleep is supposed to be,]
[So bashful when I spied her,]
[So proud she was to die]
[Softened by Time's consummate plush,]
[Some keep the Sabbath going to church;]
[Some rainbow coming from the fair!]
[Some things that fly there be, —]
[Some, too fragile for winter winds,]
[Soul, wilt thou toss again?]
[South winds jostle them,]
[Split the lark and you'll find the music,]
[Step lightly on this narrow spot!]
[Success is counted sweetest]
[Summer for thee grant I may be]
[Superfluous were the sun]
[Superiority to fate]
[Surgeons must be very careful]
[Sweet hours have perished here;]
[Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,]
[Taken from men this morning,]
[Talk with prudence to a beggar]
[That I did always love,]
[That is solemn we have ended, —]
[That short, potential stir]
[That such have died enables us]
[The bat is dun with wrinkled wings]
[The bee is not afraid of me,]
[The body grows outside, —]
[The bone that has no marrow;]
[The brain is wider than the sky,]
[The brain within its groove]
[The bustle in a house]
[The butterfly's assumption-gown,]
[The clouds their backs together laid,]
[The cricket sang,]
[The daisy follows soft the sun,]
[The day came slow, till five o'clock,]
[The distance that the dead have gone]
[The dying need but little, dear, —]
[The farthest thunder that I heard]
[The gentian weaves her fringes,]
[The grass so little has to do, —]
[The grave my little cottage is,]
[The heart asks pleasure first,]
[The last night that she lived,]
[The leaves, like women, interchange]
[The moon is distant from the sea,]
[The moon was but a chin of gold]
[The morns are meeker than they were,]
[The mountain sat upon the plain]
[The murmur of a bee]
[The murmuring of bees has ceased;]
[The mushroom is the elf of plants,]
[The nearest dream recedes, unrealized.]
[The night was wide, and furnished scant]
[The one that could repeat the summer day]
[The only ghost I ever saw]
[The past is such a curious creature,]
[The pedigree of honey]
[The rat is the concisest tenant.]
[The reticent volcano keeps]
[The robin is the one]
[The rose did caper on her cheek,]
[The show is not the show,]
[The skies can't keep their secret!]
[The sky is low, the clouds are mean,]
[The soul selects her own society,]
[The soul should always stand ajar,]
[The soul unto itself]
[The spider as an artist]
[The springtime's pallid landscape]
[The stimulus, beyond the grave]
[The sun just touched the morning;]
[The sun kept setting, setting still;]
[The thought beneath so slight a film]
[The way I read a letter 's this:]
[The wind begun to rock the grass]
[Their height in heaven comforts not,]
[There came a day at summer's full]
[There came a wind like a bugle;]
[There is a flower that bees prefer,]
[There is a shame of nobleness]
[There is a word]
[There is no frigate like a book]
[There's a certain slant of light,]
[There's been a death in the opposite house]
[There's something quieter than sleep]
[These are the days when birds come back,]
[They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,]
[They say that 'time assuages,' —]
[They won't frown always, — some sweet day]
[ This is my letter to the world,]
[This is the land the sunset washes,]
[This merit hath the worst, —]
[This was in the white of the year,]
[This world is not conclusion;]
[Though I get home how late, how late!]
[Three weeks passed since I had seen her, —]
[Through the straight pass of suffering]
['T is so much joy! 'T is so much joy!]
['T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou]
['T is whiter than an Indian pipe,]
[Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,]
[To fight aloud is very brave,]
[To hang our head ostensibly,]
[To hear an oriole sing]
[To help our bleaker parts]
[To know just how he suffered would be dear;]
[To learn the transport by the pain,]
[To lose one's faith surpasses]
[To lose thee, sweeter than to gain]
[To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, —]
[To my quick ear the leaves conferred;]
[To venerate the simple days]
[Triumph may be of several kinds.]
['T is little I could care for pearls]
['T was a long parting, but the time]
['T was just this time last year I died.]
['T was later when the summer went]
['T was such a little, little boat]
[Two butterflies went out at noon]
[Two swimmers wrestled on the spar]
[Undue significance a starving man attaches]
[Unto my books so good to turn]
[Upon the gallows hung a wretch,]
[Victory comes late,]
[Wait till the majesty of Death]
[Water is taught by thirst;]
[We cover thee, sweet face.]
[We learn in the retreating]
[We like March, his shoes are purple,]
[We never know how high we are]
[We never know we go, — when we are going]
[We outgrow love like other things]
[We play at paste,]
[We thirst at first, — 't is Nature's act;]
[Went up a year this evening!]
[What if I say I shall not wait?]
[What inn is this]
[What mystery pervades a well!]
[What soft, cherubic creatures]
[When I hoped I feared,]
[When I was small, a woman died.]
[When night is almost done,]
[When roses cease to bloom, dear,]
[Where every bird is bold to go,]
[Where ships of purple gently toss]
[Whether my bark went down at sea,]
[While I was fearing it, it came,]
[Who has not found the heaven below]
[Who never lost, are unprepared]
[Who never wanted, — maddest joy]
[Who robbed the woods,]
["Whose are the little beds," I asked,]
[Wild nights! Wild nights!]
[Will there really be a morning?]
[Within my reach!]
[You cannot put a fire out;]
[You left me, sweet, two legacies, —]
[You've seen balloons set, haven't you?]
[Your riches taught me poverty.]