Staying At Home

“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.”

“You’ll know it as you know ‘tis Noon–
By Glory–
As you do the sun–
By Glory”

“Exultation is the going
of an inland soul to the sea
Past houses – past headlands–
Into deep Eternity.”

"Tis little I – could care for pearls
Who own the ample sea –
Of Periods of seas –
Unvisited of Shores Themselves the Verge of Seas to be
Eternity – is Those . . .”

“Explore thyself
Therein thyself
shall find
The “Undiscovered Continent” No Settler had the Mind”
Once realised this Self is known to be limitless:
“The Brain – is wider than the sky–
For put them side by side –
The once the other will contain With ease –
and You – beside . . .”

“Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool
Deals one
imperial thunder bolt
that scalps your
naked soul”

“I dwell in possibility'

“The soul selects her own society and then shuts the door”

“The infinite a sudden guest
Has been assumed to be,
But how can that stupendous come
Which never went away?”

“I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth, -the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.”

Emily in a letter to a friend:

“So I conclude that space & time are things of the body & have little or nothing to do with our selves. My Country is Truth.”

~ "Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830 – 1886) did actually attend church regularly, sometimes traveling to hear some of the rousing and charismatic preachers who stamped their mark on that era. She was often moved by these sermons, perhaps as compelled by the speaker’s delivery and the construction of words as the message within them. But this was not enough to entice her to succumb to the fierce religious revival. One by one her friends received an inner calling and were ‘saved,’ officially accepting Christianity. Members of her close-knit family eventually followed suit, including her strong-willed father, and finally her brother, Austin, perhaps her closest ally. Emily would not commit to something she could not sincerely feel, even under the unthinkable social pressure that surrounded her. Increasingly her art became an expression of her spirituality."
~ Western Mystics