Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
Emily is said to have carried a pencil and scraps of paper in her pocket in order to always be prepared when a poem came her way.
~ “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.” ~
❦
Image of Emily Dickinson – from the daguerreotype taken circa 1848. (my frame)
Poem – Emily Dickinson. Complete Poems. 1924.
Nicole Plyler Fisk
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Flowers For Socrates 
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A couple of Emily poems for June:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Dont tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
—–
To see her is a picture-
To hear her is a tune-
To know her an Intemperance
As innocent as June-
To know her not-Affliction-
To own her for a Friend
A warmth as near as if the the Sun
Were shining in your Hand.
Thank you, Nona! Watch this space – my plan is to post one of Emily’s poems each day for a daily check-in with Emily, so to speak. I love that you added a couple of your favorites! Let’s keep it up! Here is one of mine:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers – (314)
“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.
A favorite of mine too!