Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
Of Bronze and Blaze
Of Bronze - and Blaze -
The North - tonight -
So adequate - its forms -
So preconcerted with itself -
So distant - to alarms -
An Unconcern so sovereign
To Universe, or me -
Infects my simple spirit
With Taints of Majesty -
Till I take vaster attitudes -
And strut upon my stem -
Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,
For Arrogance of them -
My Splendors, are Menagerie -
But their Competeless Show
Will entertain the Centuries
When I, am long ago,
An Island in dishonored Grass -
Whom none but Beetles - know.
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) is one of the foremost American poets of the 19th century. She spent her life in Amherst, Massachusetts where she was the daughter of a prominent family. Very few of her poems were published in her lifetime, and the eccentricities of her punctuation, diction, capitalization, and style continue to mystify and intrigue readers. This poem can be found in Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems, edited by Thomas H. Johnson (Little, Brown, and Co., 1961), p.49–50.
Selected by Amy Frykholm: amy@journeywithjesus.net
