'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.

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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 —

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 –

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Pain — has an Element of Blank — / It cannot recollect / When it began — or if there were / A time when it was not —

It has no Future — but itself — / Its Infinite contain / Its Past — enlightened to perceive / New Periods — of Pain.

There is a solitude of space, / A solitude of sea, / A solitude of death, but these / Society shall be,

Compared with that profounder site, / That polar privacy, / A Soul admitted to Itself: / Finite Infinity.

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Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me – / The Carriage held but just Ourselves – / And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste / And I had put away / My labor and my leisure too, / For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove / At Recess – in the Ring – / We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – / We passed the Setting Sun –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet / Feels shorter than the Day / I first surmised the Horses' Heads / Were toward Eternity –

If I can stop one heart from breaking, / I shall not live in vain; / If I can ease one life the aching, / Or cool one pain, / Or help one fainting robin / Unto his nest again, / I shall not live in vain.

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They say that 'time assuages' — / Time never did assuage — / An actual suffering strengthens / As Sinews do, with age —

Time is a Test of Trouble — / But not a Remedy — / If such it prove, it prove too / There was no Malady.

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This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies, / And Lads and Girls; / Was laughter and ability and sighing, / And frocks and curls. / This passive Place a Summer's nimble mansion, / Where Bloom and Bees / Fulfilled their oriental Circuit, / Then ceased like these.