One step at a time is all it takes to get you there.

We never know how high we are till we are called to rise. Then if we are true to form our statures touch the skies.

Love is its own rescue; for we, at our supremest, are but its trembling emblems.

Fortune befriends the bold.

Forever is composed of nows.

We turn not older with years but newer every day.

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 –
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
A Wooden way
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.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

That Love is all there is, is all we know of Love, it is enough, the freight should be proportioned to the groove.

We outgrow love like other things and put it in a drawer.

Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree.

Till it has loved, no man or woman can become itself.

A word is dead when it’s been said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. But a book is only the heart’s portrait — every page a pulse.

Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them.

Heaven is what I cannot reach!
The apple on the tree
Provided it do hopeless hang
That “heaven” is to me.

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.

There’s been a death in the opposite house
As laterly as today,
I know it by the numb look
Such houses have alway.

Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.

A Bird, came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

Wild Nights — Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile — the winds —
To a heart in port —
Done with the compass —
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden —
Ah, the sea!
Might I but moor — Tonight —
In thee!

Then I will not repine
Knowing that bird of mine
Though flown shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return.

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

Death is like the insect
Menacing the tree,
Competent to kill it,
But decoyed may be.

The moon was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.

‘Tis harder knowing it is due,
Than knowing it is here.

Earth is crammed with Heaven.

If you were coming in the fall, I’d brush the summer by With half a smile and half a spurn, As housewives do a fly. If I could see you in a year, I’d wind the months in balls, And put them each in separate drawers, Until their time befalls. If only centuries delayed, I’d count them on my hand, Subtracting till my fingers dropped Into Van Diemen’s land.

One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted —
One need not be a House —
The Brain has Corridors — surpassing
Material Place.

Nature is a haunted house — but Art — is a house that tries to be haunted.

In a serener Bright,
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
Each little discord here
Removed.

I am not used to Hope –
It might intrude upon –
Its sweet parade – blaspheme the place –
Ordained to Suffering.

I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me.

While I was fearing it, it came,
But came with less of fear,
Because that fearing it so long
Had almost made it dear.

The Brain is deeper than the sea.

It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste.

Earth is a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true.

The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him is aristocracy.

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone.

Why joys so scantily disburse,
Why Paradise defer,
Why floods are served to us in bowls, –
I speculate no more.

Not with a club, the Heart is broken
Nor with a Stone –
A Whip so small you could not see it
I’ve known.

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie –
True Poems flee.

Water is taught by thirst;
Land, by the oceans passed;
Transport, by throe;
Peace, by its battles told;
Love, by memorial mould;
Birds, by the snow.

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes –
I wonder if It weighs like Mine –
Or has an Easier size.

Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I’d toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

To be alive – is Power.

God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.

We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother – but… when she became our child, the affection came.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

Luck is not chance, it’s toil; fortune’s expensive smile is earned.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

In such a porcelain life, one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one’s hopes in a pile of broken crockery.

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.

If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her; if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase, and the approbation of my dog would forsake me then. My barefoot rank is better.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.

Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.

My friends are my estate.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.

Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.

Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.

Where thou art, that is home.

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

Beauty is not caused. It is.

Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.

They might not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.

I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don’t doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision.

The brain is wider than the sky.

Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.

Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass, that the guest leaves.

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.

Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

In this short Life that only lasts an hour
How much – how little – is within our power.

Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.

I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.

The heart wants what it wants – or else it does not care.

That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.

Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.