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The voices / 173 fragments

Emily Dickinson

1830 AD — 1886 AD

Poet of concentrated images and unsettled questions, whose preserved writing invites close reading. The linked early published series reflects editorial choices, rather than a modern manuscript-based edition.

Author and source reference ↗
▷ Play this voiceSearch within this voice ↗Place in time ↗lifelovetimeknowledgetruthdeathworkjustice
Historical source references

Life and writing

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830 and died in 1886. During the particularly active writing period identified by scholars as 1858–1865, she composed, revised and preserved hundreds of poems. Her writing continued later in life. Reading that record as an ongoing practice of revision helps resist treating every brief line as a final, self-contained rule for living.

Emily Dickinson Museum — Childhood and Youth, 1830–1855 ↗Emily Dickinson Museum — The Writing Years, 1855–1865 ↗Emily Dickinson Museum — The Later Years, 1865–1886 ↗ Museum childhood biography: birth; writing years: 1858–1865; later years: continued writing and death

The linked Poems, Three Series, Complete gathers early published versions. Its editorial note warns readers about changes made to Dickinson’s punctuation, and the first series names Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson as editors. The complete signed anthology selection chosen here offers a starting point for reading an entire poem. Keep that anthology wording distinct from this edition and from later manuscript-based scholarship.

Project Gutenberg — Poems, Three Series, Complete, PG 12242 ↗ PG12242 editorial note and first-series editors; source-bound anthology selection 385; original reading guidance

Reading this voice

Read the selected poem aloud and notice how its repeated ending gathers the acts described in the intervening lines. Then read a whole poem in the linked collection, paying attention to punctuation, pauses and the speaking voice. A speaker in a poem is not automatically a biographical statement by the author. Most other entries under this identity come from the supplied quotation collection and remain independently unverified. Profile life years do not replace their undated source coordinates.

Subjects to explore

Editorial reading connections, distinct from the archive’s word matching.

lifedeathnaturemind

A work to read

Begin with these archive passages

Editorial starting points from this author’s existing entries.

Profile sources and editorial status

Original agent-assisted editorial profile, checked 2026-10-05. No human review is recorded. Life dates are recorded to the year; they do not date individual quotations.

Archive entries

03Undated
Because I could not stop for Death,He kindly stopped for me;The carriage held but just ourselvesAnd Immortality.We slowly drove, he knew no haste,And I had put awayMy labour, and my leisure too,For his civility.We passed the school where children played,Their lessons scarcely done;We passed the fields of gazing grain,We passed the setting sun.We paused before a house that seemedA swelling of the ground;The roof was scarcely visible,The cornice but a mound.Since then 'tis centuries; but eachFeels shorter than the dayI first surmised the horses' headsWere toward eternity.
Emily Dickinson / quote
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12Undated
I measure every Grief I meetWith narrow, probing, Eyes;I wonder if It weighs like Mine,Or has an Easier size. I wonder if They bore it long,Or did it just begin?I could not tell the Date of Mine, It feels so old a pain. I wonder if it hurts to live,And if They have to try,And whether, could They choose between, It would not be, to die. I note that Some -- gone patient long --At length, renew their smile.An imitation of a LightThat has so little Oil. I wonder if when Years have piled,Some Thousands -- on the Harm Of early hurt -- if such a lapseCould give them any Balm; Or would they go on aching stillThrough Centuries above,Enlightened to a larger PainBy Contrast with the Love. The Grieved are many, I am told;The reason deeper lies, --Death is but oneand comes but once,And only nails the eyes. There's Grief of Want and Grief of Cold, --A sort they call "Despair";There's Banishment from native Eyes,In sight of Native Air. And though I may not guess the kindCorrectly, yet to meA piercing Comfort it affordsIn passing Calvary, To note the fashions of the Cross,And how they're mostly worn,Still fascinated to presumeThat Some are like My Own.
Emily Dickinson / quote
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20Undated
It was not death, for I stood up,And all the dead lie down;It was not night, for all the bellsPut out their tongues, for noon.It was not frost, for on my fleshI felt siroccos crawl,Nor fire, for just my marble feetCould keep a chancel cool.And yet it tasted like them all;The figures I have seenSet orderly, for burial,Reminded me of mine,As if my life were shavenAnd fitted to a frame,And could not breathe without a key;And I was like midnight, some,When everything that ticked has stopped,And space stares, all around,Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,Repeal the beating ground.But most like chaos,--stopless, cool,Without a chance or spar,--Or even a report of landTo justify despair.
Emily Dickinson / quote
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23Undated
I had been hungry all the years-My noon had come, to dine-I, trembling, drew the table nearAnd touched the curious wine. 'Twas this on tables I had seenWhen turning, hungry, lone,I looked in windows, for the wealthI could not hope to own. I did not know the ample bread,'Twas so unlike the crumbThe birds and I had often sharedIn Nature's diningroom. The plenty hurt me, 'twas so new,--Myself felt ill and odd,As berry of a mountain bushTransplanted to the road. Nor was I hungry; so I foundThat hunger was a wayOf persons outside windows,The entering takes away.
Emily Dickinson / quote
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