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Browse alphabetically through more than 9,000 words in Dickinson’s poetry, as defined in the Emily Dickinson Lexicon, based in part on her dictionary, Webster's 1844 American Dictionary of the English Language.
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The Way to
know the Bobolink
From every other
Bird
Precisely as the
Joy of him -
Obliged to be
inferred.
Of impudent
Habiliment
Attired to defy,
Impertinence
subordinate a
At times to
Majesty -
Of Sentiments
seditious
Amenable to Law -
As Heresies
of Transport
Or Puck's
Apostacy -
Extrinsic to
Attention
Too intimate
with Joy -
He compliments
Existence
Until allured
away
By Seasons
or his Children -
Adult and
urgent grown -
Or unforeseen
Aggrandizement
Or, possibly
happily, Renown -
By Contrast
certifying
The Bird of
Birds is gone -
How nullified
the Meadow -
Her Sorcerer
withdrawn!
Not with a
Club, the Heart
is broken
Nor with a
Stone -
A Whip so
small you
could not see it
I've known
To lash the
Magic Creature
Till it fell,
Yet that Whip's
Name
Too noble then
to tell.
Magnanimous
as Bird
By Boy
descried -
Singing unto the
Stone
Of which it died -
Shame need not
crouch
In such an Earth
as Our's -
Shame - stand erect -
The Universe is your's.
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