Emily Dickinson, one of America's most famous poets, was born in Amherst, Massachuetts on December 10, 1830 to a prominent family. She was educated at Amerherst Academy, the institution her grandfather helped found. She spent a year at the Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary, but left because she didn't like the religious environment and because her parents asked her to come home.
In her twenties, Emily led a busy social life, but she became more reclusive with each passing year. By her thirties, she stayed to her home and withdrew when visitors arrived. She attended almost exclusively to household chores and to writing poetry. She developed a reputation as a myth, because almost never seen and, when people did catch sight of her, she was always wearing white.
Although she withdrew from physical contact with people, she did not withdraw from them mentally. Emily was an avid letter-writer who corresponded with a great number of friends and relatives.
Emily often included poetry with her letters to friends. Her friends encouraged her to publish, but after an attempt to do so in 1860 (when the publisher suggested she hold off) Emily did not appear to try again. The eight poems that were published in her lifetime were primarily poems submitted by her friends without her permission.
Emily died on May 15, 1886 from Bright's disease.
Few of Emily’s poems were titled. They that are not, are sometimes listed by the first line of the poem or by roman numerals.
Because I could not stop for Death
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of grazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 't is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
The Forgotten Grave
After a hundred years
Nobody knows the place,--
Agony that enacted there,
Motionless as peace.
Weeds triumphant ranged,
Strangers strolled and spelled
At the lone orthography
Of the elder dead.
Winds of summer fields
Recollect the way,--
Instinct picking up the key
Dropped by memory.
Other Links on Emily Dickinson:
Erin’s Emily Dickinson Page