Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924. |
Part One: Life
V
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| GLEE! the great storm is over! | |
| Four have recovered the land; | |
| Forty gone down together | |
| Into the boiling sand. | |
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| Ring, for the scant salvation! | 5 |
| Toll, for the bonnie souls,— | |
| Neighbor and friend and bridegroom, | |
| Spinning upon the shoals! | |
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| How they will tell the shipwreck | |
| When winter shakes the door, | 10 |
| Till the children ask, “But the forty? | |
| Did they come back no more?” | |
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| Then a silence suffuses the story, | |
| And a softness the teller’s eye; | |
| And the children no further question, | 15 |
| And only the waves reply. | |
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