Assorted Poems by Emily Dickinson - Read by Lady Scarlett

Transcript

These are poems from the poet Emily Dickinson. She's one of my favorites. And I think I feel a closeness with her work that I don't feel with a lot of others.

So yeah. We're starting with A Route of Evanescence, poem number 1489. A route of evanescence, with a revolving wheel, a resonance of emerald, a rush of cocknail, and every blossom on the bush adjusts its tumbled head, the mail from Tunis probably, an easy morning's ride.

Forever is composed of nows, poem 690. Forever is composed of nows, tis not a different time, except for infiniteness, and latitude of home. From this experienced here, remove the dates to these, let months dissolve in further months, and years exhale in years, without debate or pause or celebrated days.

No different our years would be from Anno Domini's. To fight aloud is very brave, poem number 138. To fight aloud is very brave, but gallanter I know, who charge within the bosom the cavalry of woe, who win and nations do not see, who fall and none observe, whose dying eyes no country regards with patriot love.

We trust in plumed procession, for such the angels go, rank after rank, with even feet and uniforms of snow. Wild Nights, Wild Nights, poem number 269. Wild Nights, Wild Nights, were I with thee, wild nights should be our luxury, feudal the winds, to a heart and port, done with the compass, done with the chart, rowing in Eden, ah the sea, might I but more tonight in thee.

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants, poem number 1350. The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants, at evening it is not, at morning in a truffled hut, it stop upon a spot, as if it tarried always, and yet its whole career is shorter than a snake's delay, and fleeter than a tear, tis vegetation's juggler, the germ of alibi, doth like a bumble antedate, and like a bumble high, I feel as if the grass was pleased, to have it intermit, the surreptitious scion of summer's circumspect, had nature any supple face, or could she one contemn, had nature an apostate, that Mushroom it is him. Come Slowly Eden, poem number 205.

Come slowly Eden, lips unused to thee, bashful sip thy jessamines, as the fainting bee, reaching late his flower, round her chamber hums, counts his nectars, enters, and is lost in balms. Much Madness is Divinest Sense, poem number 620. Much Madness is Divinest Sense, to a discerning eye, much sense, the starkest madness, tis the majority, in this as all prevail, assent, and you are sane, demure, you're straightaway dangerous, and handled with a chain.

I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died, poem number 591. I heard a fly buzz when I died, the stillness in the room, was like the stillness in the air, between the heaves of storm. The eyes around had wrung them dry, and breaths were gathering firm, for that last onset when the king be witnessed in the room.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away, what portion of me be assignable, and then it was 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. Because I Could Not Stop for Death, poem number 479. Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me.

The carriage held but just ourselves, and immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, and I had put away, my labor and my leisure too, for his civility. We passed the school where children strove, at recess, in the ring.

We passed the fields of grazing grain, we passed the setting sun, or rather he passed us. The dews drew quivering and chill, we paused before a house that seemed a swelling of the ground, the roof was scarcely visible, the cornice in the ground. Since then, tis centuries, and yet feel shorter than a day, I first surmised the horse's heads were toward eternity.

I felt a funeral in my brain, poem 340. I felt a funeral in my brain, and mourners to and fro kept treading, treading, till it seemed that sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, a service like a drum kept beating, beating, till I thought my mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box, and creak across my soul, with those same boots of lead again. Then space began to toll, as all the heavens were a bell, and being but an ear, and I and silence some strange race, wrecked solitary here. And then a plank in reason broke, and I dropped down, and down, and hit a world at every plunge, and finished knowing then.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes, poem 372. 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.

Hope is the thing with feathers. Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without 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.