Emily Dickinson
At the NYC G&L Reading Group’s September 9, 1999 meeting, we discussed the extraordinary poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886). Here is a list of about a hundred, including the best-known, of her 1,775 poems, from editor Thomas H. Johnson’s three-volume edition, published 1955. Dickinson’s poems, only ten of which saw print during her lifetime, have a complicated textual history, with early editions making egregious changes to her work, as detailed in an overview at Poetry Foundation.
Below, titles preceded by an asterisk (*) are noted by Lillian Faderman, in her collection Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the 17th Century to the Present, as some of Dickinson’s most overtly lesbian poems. The numbers preceding each title refer to the texts edited, from the original manuscripts, by Thomas H. Johnson in 1955; Harvard University Press superseded that edition in 1998 with R.W. Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, that contains 1,789 poems.
Selected Poems
- 24 There is a morn by men unseen—
- 49 I never lost as much but twice
- 84 * Her breast is fit for pearls
- 107 ‘Twas such a little—little boat
- 125 For each ecstatic instant
- 156 * You love me—you are sure—
- 174 At last, to be identified!
- 211 Come slowly—Eden!
- 214 I taste a liquor never brewed—
- 216 Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—
- 249 * Wild Nights—Wild Nights!
- 254 “Hope” is the thing with feathers—
- 258 There’s a certain Slant of light
- 271 A Solemn thing—it was—I said—
- 280 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
- 281 ‘Tis so appalling—it exhilarates—
- 282 How noteless Men, and Pleiads, stand
- 288 I’m Nobody! Who are you?
- 289 I Know some lonely Houses off the Road
- 293 I got so I could hear his name—
- 303 The Soul selects her own Society
- 312 Her—”last Poems”—
- 341 After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
- 365 Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?
- 384 No Rack can torture me—
- 392 Through the Dark Sod—as Education
- 401 What Soft—Cherubic Creatures—
- 410 The first Day’s Night had come
- 414 ‘Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch
- 425 Good Morning—Midnight—
- 435 Much Madness is divinest Sense—
- 441 This is my letter to the World
- 446 * I showed her Hights she never saw—
- 448 This was a Poet—It is That
- 449 I died for Beauty, but was scarce
- 458 * Like Eyes that looked on Wastes—
- 460 I know where Wells grow—Droughtless Wells—
- 462 Why make it doubt—it hurts it so—
- 465 I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
- 508 I’m ceded—I’ve stopped being Theirs—
- 510 It was not death, for I stood up
- 512 The Soul has Bandaged moments—
- 518 * Her sweet Weight on my Heart a Night
- 528 Mine—by the Right of the White Election!
- 532 I tried to think a lonelier Thing
- 569 I reckon—when I count at all—
- 579 I had been hungry, all the Years—
- 585 I like to see it lap the Miles—
- 593 l think I was enchanted
- 613 They shut me up in Prose—
- 615 Our journey had advanced—
- 620 It makes no difference abroad—
- 621 I asked no other thing
- 624 Forever—is composed of Nows—
- 627 The Tint I cannot take—is best—
- 631 * Ourselves were wed one summer—dear—
- 633 When Bells stop ringing—Church—begins—
- 640 I cannot live with You—
- 642 Me from Myself—to banish—
- 650 Pain—has an Element of Blank—
- 657 I dwell in Possibility—
- 669 No Romance sold unto
- 670 One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted—
- 701 A Thought went up my mind today—
- 709 Publication—is the Auction
- 712 Because I could not stop for Death—
- 722 Sweet Mountains—Ye tell Me no lie—
- 728 Let Us play Yesterday
- 732 She rose to His Requirement—dropt
- 744 Remorse—is Memory—awake—
- 745 Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue—
- 747 It dropped so low in my regard
- 754 My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—
- 764 Presentiment—is that long Shadow—on the Lawn
- 777 The Loneliness One dare not sound—
- 845 * Be Mine the Doom—
- 917 Love—is anterior to Life—
- 919 If I can stop one Heart from breaking
- 941 * The Lady feeds Her little Bird
- 959 A loss of something ever felt I—
- 976 Death is a Dialogue between
- 986 A narrow Fellow in the Grass
- 1026 The Dying need but little, Dear
- 1052 I never saw a Moor
- 1068 Further in Summer than the Birds
- 1072 Title divine—is mine!
- 1075 The Sky is low—the Clouds are mean
- 1076 Just once—oh least request!
- 1081 Superiority to Fate
- 1100 The last Night that She lived
- 1129 Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
- 1138 A Spider sewed at Night
- 1219 * Now I knew I lost her—
- 1241 The Lilac is an ancient shrub
- 1318 * Frigid and sweet Her parting Face—
- 1400 What mystery pervades a well!
- 1445 Death is the supple Suitor
- 1540 As imperceptibly as Grief
- 1545 The Bible is an antique Volume—
- 1551 Those—dying then
- 1562 Her Losses made her Gains ashamed—
- 1568 * To see her is a Picture—
- 1651 A Word made Flesh is seldom
- 1657 Eden is that old-fashioned House
- 1670 In Winter in my Room
- 1683 * That she forgot me was the least
- 1705 Volcanoes be in Siciliy
- 1732 My life closed twice before its close
- 1737 Rearrange a “Wife’s” affection!
- 1755 To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee
Website begun 1997 / Updated March 3, 2022