POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON
Butterflies pauseOn their passage Cashmere;I, softly plucking,Present them here!
XXXIX
BRING me the sunset in a cup,Reckon the morning’s flagons up,And say how many dew;Tell me how far the morning leaps,Tell me what time the weaver sleeps Who spun the breadths of blue!
Write me how many notes there beIn the new robin’s ecstasy Among astonished boughs;How many trips the tortoise makes,How many cups the bee partakes,— The debauchee of dews!
Also, who laid the rainbow’s piers,Also, who leads the docile spheres By withes of supple blue?Whose fingers string the stalactite,Who counts the wampum of the night, To see that none is due?
Who built this little Alban houseAnd shut the windows down so closeMy spirit cannot see?
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