Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. Part Two: Nature 1924.

II

WILL there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?
Has it feet like water-lilies?	5
Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?
Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
Oh, some wise man from the skies!	10
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called morning lies! XXXI NATURE rarer uses yellow   Than another hue; Saves she all of that for sunsets,—   Prodigal of blue,    Spending scarlet like a woman,         5   Yellow she affords Only scantly and selectly,   Like a lover’s words. XXXIII HOW happy is the little stone That rambles in the road alone, And does n’t care about careers, And exigencies never fears; Whose coat of elemental brown         5 A passing universe put on; And independent as the sun, Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute decree In casual simplicity.         10 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         5   Who spun the breadths of blue!    Write me how many notes there be In the new robin’s ecstasy   Among astonished boughs; How many trips the tortoise makes,         10 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?         15 Whose fingers string the stalactite, Who counts the wampum of the night,   To see that none is due?    Who built this little Alban house And shut the windows down so close         20   My spirit cannot see? Who ’ll let me out some gala day, With implements to fly away,   Passing pomposity? LXXIII I ’LL tell you how the sun rose,— A ribbon at a time. The steeples swam in amethyst, The news like squirrels ran.    The hills untied their bonnets,         5 The bobolinks begun. Then I said softly to myself, “That must have been the sun!”    But how he set, I know not. There seemed a purple stile         10 Which little yellow boys and girls Were climbing all the while    Till when they reached the other side, A dominie in gray Put gently up the evening bars,         15 And led the flock away. LXXXIV SHE slept beneath a tree   Remembered but by me. I touched her cradle mute; She recognized the foot, Put on her carmine suit,—         5       And see! (With a Tulip.)