utterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

"Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!"

* * * * *

"But how he set I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while,

"Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in grey
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away."

* * * * *

"He preached upon 'breadth' till it argued him narrow--
The broad are too broad to define;
And of 'truth' until it proclaimed him a liar--
The truth never flaunted a sign.
Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence
As gold the pyrites would shun.
What confusion would cover the innocent Jesus
To meet so enabled a man!"

The "so _enabled_ a man" is a very characteristic Dickinsonian phrase.
So, too, are these:

"He put the belt around my life--
I heard the buckle snap."
"Unfitted by an instant's grace
For the contented beggar's face
I wore an hour ago."

* * * * *

"Just his sigh, accented,
Had been legible to me."

* * * * *

"The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth--
The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity."

Her interest in all the familiar sights and sounds of a village garden
is evident through all her verses. Her illustrations are not
recondite, literary, or conventional; she finds them at her own door.
The robin, the buttercup, the maple, furnish what she needs. The bee,
in particular, seems to have had a peculiar fascination for her, and
hums through all her poems. She had even a kindly word for that
"neglected son of genius," the spider. Her love of children is equally
evident, and no one has ever better caught the spirit of

"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!"

The bold extravagance of her diction (w