Emily Dickinson (एमिली डिकिंसन)

I'm nobody! Who are you?,Are you nobody, too?.

Then there 's a pair of us -- don't tell!,They 'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!,How public, like a frog.

To tell your name the livelong day,To an admiring bog!.

I heard a fly buzz when I died,The stillness round my form.

Was like the stillness in the air,Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,And breaths were gathering sure.

For that last onset, when the king,Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away,What portion of me I.

Could make assignable, -- and then,There interposed a fly.

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,Between the light and me.

And then the windows failed, and then,I could not see to see.

Success is counted sweetest,By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar,Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host,Who took the flag to-day.

Can tell the definition,So clear, of victory.

As he, defeated, dying,On whose forbidden ear.

The distant strains of triumph,Break, agonized and clear!.

Our share of night to bear,Our share of morning.

Our blank in bliss to fill,Our blank in scorning.

Here a star, and there a star,Some lose their way.

Here a mist, and there a mist,Afterwards -- day!.

Soul, wilt thou toss again?,By just such a hazard.

Hundreds have lost, indeed,But tens have won an all.

Angels' breathless ballot,Lingers to record thee.

Imps in eager caucus,Raffle for my soul.

'T is so much joy! 'T is so much joy!,If I should fail, what poverty!.

And yet, as poor as I,Have ventured all upon a throw.

Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so,This side the victory!.

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!.

And if I gain, -- oh, gun at sea,Oh, bells that in the steeples be.

At first repeat it slow!,For heaven is a different thing.

Conjectured, and waked sudden in,And might o'erwhelm me so!.

Glee! The great storm is over!,Four have recovered the land.

Forty gone down together,Into the boiling sand.

Ring, for the scant salvation!,Toll, for the bonnie souls, --.

Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,Spinning upon the shoals!.

How they will tell the shipwreck,When winter shakes the door.

Till the children ask, "But the forty?,Did they come back no more?".

Then a silence suffuses the story,And a softness the teller's eye.

And the children no further question,And only the waves reply.

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.

Within my reach!,I could have touched!.

I might have chanced that way!,Soft sauntered through the village.

Sauntered as soft away!,So unsuspected violets.

Within the fields lie low,Too late for striving fingers.

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 cautions arm.

Lest anybody spy the blood,And "You're hurt" exclaim!.

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.

A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is,To meet an antique book.

In just the dress his century wore,A privilege, I think.

His venerable hand to take,And warming in our own.

A passage back, or two, to make,To times when he was young.

His quaint opinions to inspect,His knowledge to unfold.

On what concerns our mutual mind,The literature of old.

What interested scholars most,What competitions ran.

When Plato was a certainty,And Sophocles a man.

When Sappho was a living girl,And Beatrice wore.

The gown that Dante deified,Facts, centuries before.

He traverses familiar,As one should come to town.

And tell you all your dreams were true,He lived where dreams were sown.

His presence is enchantment,You beg him not to go.

Old volumes shake their vellum heads,And tantalize, just so.

Much madness is divinest sense,To a discerning eye.

Much sense the starkest madness,'T is the majority.

In this, as all, prevails,Assent, and you are sane.

Demur, -- you're straightway dangerous,And handled with a chain.

I asked no other thing,No other was denied.

I offered Being for it,The mighty merchant smiled.

Brazil? He twirled a button,Without a glance my way.

"But, madam, is there nothing else,That we can show to-day?".

The soul selects her own society,Then shuts the door.

On her divine majority,Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing,At her low gate.

Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling,Upon her mat.

I've known her from an ample nation,Choose one.

Then close the valves of her attention,Like stone.

Some things that fly there be, --,Birds, hours, the bumble-bee.

Of these no elegy,Some things that stay there be, --.

Grief, hills, eternity,Nor this behooveth me.

There are, that resting, rise,Can I expound the skies?.

I know some lonely houses off the road,A robber 'd like the look of, --.

Wooden barred,And windows hanging low.

Inviting to,A portico.

Where two could creep,One hand the tools.

The other peep,To make sure all's asleep.

Old-fashioned eyes,Not easy to surprise!.

How orderly the kitchen 'd look by night,With just a clock, --.

But they could gag the tick,And mice won't bark.

And so the walls don't tell,None will.