Thread: Emily Dickinson
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Unread 02-13-2001, 03:18 PM
robert mezey robert mezey is offline
Master of Memory
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Claremont CA USA
Posts: 570
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CM, where did you get the idea that Emily D.
is Frost's mother? You can hear her perhaps
in an early poem like "Stars" but Frost is
not much influenced by her, if at all. Her
poems were first published in 1890, when Frost
was well into his teens, and though he loved
her work, that's not where he suckled. There
is much more Longfellow and Emerson in him
than Dickinson, and far more Milton, Horace,
Virgil, etc.
Anyway, here's a Dickinson poem I particularly
admire, which isn't one of the best known:

Of all the souls that stand create
I have elected one.
When sense from spirit files away,
And subterfuge is done;

When that which is and that which was
Apart, intrinsic, stand,
And this brief tragedy of flesh
Is shifted like a sand;

When figures show their royal front
And mists are carved away,---
Behold the atom I preferred
To all the lists of clay!