Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, USA

549

That I did always love
I bring thee Proof
That till I loved
I never lived – Enough –
That I shall love always -
I argue thee
That love is life -
And live hath Immortality –

This – dost thou doubt – Sweet
Then have I
Nothing to show
But Calvary.

1287

In this short Life
That only lasts an hour
How much – how little – is
Within our power.

1659

Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the
Farmer’s Corn -
Men eat of it and die.

Emily Dickinson (USA)

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, born in 1830, is one of America’s greatest poets.  She was considered a kind of hermit and quite eccentric by most of the persons who knew her. It appears that she was plagued by a terrible fear of death which, however, resulted into fine poems. Although she began to write at a young age, only a dozen of her poems were published during her life. Most of her poetry was written in the early 1960’s. Before she died – at the age of 55 – she asked her sister to burn all her poems, wish her sister ignored. She started publishing them after her death. In 1955 a scholar released the original versions of her major poems, since then she has been recognized as one of the most important American poets of the 20th Century.