The following are selected verses from Emily Dickinson's collection titled 'Life'.
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
~~~~~~~~~
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.
~~~~~~
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! 5
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
- Emily Dickinson
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
~~~~~~~~~
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.
~~~~~~
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! 5
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
- Emily Dickinson
I cannot thank you enough for bringing to my attention these gems of verses. I had never read it before and I will keep it like the cult poem, 'If' by Kipling. I liked particularly that third passage. How selective humans tend to be with the people and situations they associate themselves with. How once the soul "selects her own society" the rest of the world is shut out and the soul refuses to dance with any other groups. In the second quatrain of that passage, Dickinson writes on how even when incredible circumstances come upon one, the soul remains "unmoved". I liked her reiteration that the soul has the ability to choose whatever domain or friends they want; it's getting the soul to allow change that's difficult.
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