Notes in Emily Dickinson’s pocket – “Musicians wrestle everywhere” (Life, 82)

~ Joy of Fishes

Emily_Dickinson_daguerreotype 3

Musicians wrestle everywhere:	
All day, among the crowded air,	
  I hear the silver strife;	
And—waking long before the dawn—	
Such transport breaks upon the town
  I think it that “new life!”	
  
It is not bird, it has no nest;	
Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed,	
  Nor tambourine, nor man;	
It is not hymn from pulpit read,—
The morning stars the treble led	
  On time’s first afternoon!	
  
Some say it is the spheres at play!	
Some say that bright majority	
  Of vanished dames and men!
Some think it service in the place	
Where we, with late, celestial face,	
  Please God, shall ascertain!

 

~  “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.”  ~
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Image of Emily Dickinson – from the daguerreotype taken circa 1848.
Poem – Emily Dickinson. Complete Poems. 1924.