Poem by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

* * *

I have a king who does not speak;
So, wondering, thro' the hours meek
  I trudge the day away,--
Half glad when it is night and sleep,
If, haply, thro' a dream to peep
  In parlors shut by day.

And if I do, when morning comes,
It is as if a hundred drums
  Did round my pillow roll,
And shouts fill all my childish sky,
And bells keep saying 'victory'
  From steeples in my soul!

And if I don't, the little Bird
Within the Orchard is not heard,
  And I omit to pray,
'Father, thy will be done' to-day,
For my will goes the other way,
  And it were perjury!

1. This Merit Hath the Worst
2. Contrast
3. The Nearest Dream Recedes, Unrealized
4. In Lands I Never Saw, They Say
5. He Put the Belt around My Life

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