Selected Works

"If fame belonged to me I could not escape her"
 from a letter Dickinson wrote to Higginson , June, 1862

448    675    883    441    1659    1475    1009     1232    866    1659

448
This was a Poet -- It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings --
And Attar so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door --
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it -- before --

Of Pictures, the Discloser --
The Poet -- it is He --
Entitles Us -- by Contrast --
To ceaseless Poverty --

Of portion -- so unconscious --
The Robbing -- could not harm --
Himself -- to Him -- a Fortune --
Exterior -- to Time --

675
Essential Oils -- are wrung --
The Attar from the Rose
Be not expressed by Suns -- alone --
It is the gift of Screws --

The General Rose -- decay --
But this -- in Lady's Drawer
Make Summer -- When the Lady lie
In Ceaseless Rosemary --

883
The Poets light but Lamps --
Themselves -- go out --
The Wicks they stimulate --
If vital Light

Inhere as do the Suns --
Each Age a Lens
Disseminating their
Circumference --

441
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.

Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

1475

Fame is the one that does not stay --
Its occupant must die
Or out of sight of estimate
Ascend incessantly --
Or be that most insolvent thing
A Lightning in the Germ --
Electrical the embryo
But we demand the Flame

1659

Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the
Farmer's Corn --
Men eat of it and die.

1009

I was a Phoebe -- nothing more --
A Phoebe -- nothing less --
The little note that others dropt
I fitted into place --

I dwelt too low that any seek --
Too shy, that any blame --
A Phoebe makes a little print
Upon the Floors of Fame --

1232

The Clover's simple Fame
Remembered of the Cow --
Is better than enameled Realms
Of notability.
Renown perceives itself
And that degrades the Flower --
The Daisy that has looked behind
Has compromised its power --

866

Fame is the tine that Scholars leave
Upon their Setting Names --
The Iris not of Occident
That disappears as comes --

448    675    883    441    1659    1475    1009     1232    866    1659 
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