1. EMILY DICKINSON
XIII

2. THE SOUL selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

3. Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

4. I ’ve known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.

5. Because I Could Not Stop For Death
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

6. We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

7. We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

8. We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible.
The cornice but a mound.

9. Since then 'tis centuries but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

10. Hope is the Thing with Feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,

11. And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

12. I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea,
Yet never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

13. The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

14. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

15. Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

16. And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

17. I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

18. FIRE AND ICE Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,

19. I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.