5 Emily Dickinson poems to read on her birthday

Birthday of but a single pang

That there are less to come —

Afflictive is the Adjective

But affluent the doom —

I dwell in Possibility —

A fairer House than Prose —

More numerous of Windows —

Superior — for Doors —


Of Chambers as the Cedars —

Impregnable of eye —

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky —


Of Visitors — the fairest —

For Occupation — This —

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise —

Death is the supple Suitor

That wins at last —

It is a stealthy Wooing

Conducted first

By pallid innuendoes

And dim approach

But brave at last with Bugles

And a bisected Coach

It bears away in triumph

To Troth unknown

And Kindred as responsive

As Porcelain.

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 —

That perches in the soul —

And sings the tune without the 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.