Favorite Poets I

Emily Dickinson

My favorite poet of all is Emily Dickinson.  Here is one of her poems that is not quoted that often, but that I really like for its drama and emotion.

Glee!  The great storm is over!

Four have recovered the land.

Forty gone down together

Into the boiling sand.

 

Ring, for the scant salvation!

Toll, for the bonnie souls,–

Neighbor and friend and bridegroom

Spinning upon the shoals!

 

How will they tell the shipwreck

When winter shakes the door,

Till the children ask, “But the forty?

Did they come back no more?”

 

Then a silence suffuses the story,

And a softness, the teller’s eye;

And the children no further question,

And only the waves reply.