"The Belle of Amherst"

By: Emily Dickinson

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.

A Book

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry

This traverse may be the poorest take

With out oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

Saturday Afternoon

From all the jails the boys and girls

Ecstatically leap,--

Beloved, only afternoon

That prison doesn't keep.

They storm the earth and stun the air.

A mob of solid bliss.

Alas! that frowns could lie in wait

For such a foe as this!

Friends

Are friends delight or pain?

Could bounty but remain

Riches were good.

But if they only stay

Bolder to fly away,

Riches are sad.

Philosophy

It might be easier

To fail with land in sight,

Then gain my blue peninsula

To perish of delight.

The Cricket Sang

The Cricket sang

And set the sun,

And workmen finished, one by one

Their seam the day upon.

The low grass loaded with the dew,

The twilight stood as strangers do

With hat in hand, polite and new,

To stay as if,go.

A vastness, as a neighbor, came,--

A wisdom without face or name,

A peace, as hemispheres at home,--

And so the night became.