Poetry Thursday: Emily Dickinson

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I've decided to start a new feature, since features are decidedly easier to post regularly than spontaneous-subject posts. I've just started reading poetry (for fun!) recently, and thought it would be nice to include one of my favorites every week (to build onto the literary theme of this blog). For now, we'll call it 'Poetry Thursday', though it may become something catchier and more lyrical later on. :)

This poem came out of one of my recent loans from the library (with Lilly's card, buahaha); Emily Dickinson/Collected Poems. I haven't read through much of the collection yet, but of the few I've read, I enjoyed that this one had more of a narrative. Enjoy!
...

V.

GLEE! the great storm is over!
Four have recovered the land;
Forty gone down together
Into the boiling sand.

Ring, for the scant salvation!
Toll, for the bonnie souls,-
Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
Spinning upon the shoals!

How they will tell the shipwreck
When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, "But the forty?
Did they come back no more?"

Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller's eye;
And the children no further question,
And only the waves reply.

-Emily Dickinson