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by
Emily Dickinson
We wear our sober Dresses when we die,
We wear our sober Dresses when we die,
But Summer, frilled as for a Holiday
Adjourns her sigh --
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by
Emily Dickinson
Lest any doubt that we are glad that they were born Today
Lest any doubt that we are glad that they were born Today
Whose having lived is held by us in noble Holiday
Without the date, like Consciousness or Immortality --
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by
Emily Dickinson
That is solemn we have ended
That is solemn we have ended
Be it but a Play
Or a Glee among the Garret
Or a Holiday
Or a leaving Home, or later,
Parting with a World
We have understood for better
Still to be explained.
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by
Emily Dickinson
So glad we are -- a Stranger'd deem
'Twas sorry, that we were --
For where the Holiday should be
There publishes a Tear --
Nor how Ourselves be justified --
Since Grief and Joy are done
So similar -- An Optizan
Could not decide between --
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by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Compensation
Why should I keep holiday,
When other men have none?
Why but because when these are gay,
I sit and mourn alone.
And why when mirth unseals all tongues
Should mine alone be dumb?
Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs,
And now their hour is come.
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by
Emily Dickinson
Me! Come! My dazzled face
Me! Come! My dazzled face
In such a shining place!
Me! Hear! My foreign ear
The sounds of welcome near!
The saints shall meet
Our bashful feet.
My holiday shall be
That they remember me;
My paradise, the fame
That they pronounce my name.
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by
Emily Dickinson
Me! Come! My dazzled face
Me! Come! My dazzled face
In such a shining place!
Me! Hear! My foreign ear
The sounds of welcome near!
The saints shall meet
Our bashful feet.
My holiday shall be
That they remember me;
My paradise, the fame
That they pronounce my name.
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by
Emily Dickinson
Me -- come! My dazzled face
Me -- come! My dazzled face
In such a shining place!
Me -- hear! My foreign Ear
The sounds of Welcome -- there!
The Saints forget
Our bashful feet --
My Holiday, shall be
That They -- remember me --
My Paradise -- the fame
That They -- pronounce my name --
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by
Emily Dickinson
Exhilaration -- is within
Exhilaration -- is within --
There can no Outer Wine
So royally intoxicate
As that diviner Brand
The Soul achieves -- Herself --
To drink -- or set away
For Visitor -- Or Sacrament --
'Tis not of Holiday
To stimulate a Man
Who hath the Ample Rhine
Within his Closet -- Best you can
Exhale in offering.
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by
Emily Dickinson
Removed from Accident of Loss
Removed from Accident of Loss
By Accident of Gain
Befalling not my simple Days --
Myself had just to earn --
Of Riches -- as unconscious
As is the Brown Malay
Of Pearls in Eastern Waters,
Marked His -- What Holiday
Would stir his slow conception --
Had he the power to dream
That put the Dower's fraction --
Awaited even -- Him --
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by
Emily Dickinson
Their Barricade against the Sky
Their Barricade against the Sky
The martial Trees withdraw
And with a Flag at every turn
Their Armies are no more.
What Russet Halts in Nature's March
They indicate or cause
An inference of Mexico
Effaces the Surmise --
Recurrent to the After Mind
That Massacre of Air --
The Wound that was not Wound nor Scar
But Holidays of War
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by
Emily Dickinson
The Bird did prance -- the Bee did play --
The Bird did prance -- the Bee did play --
The Sun ran miles away
So blind with joy he could not choose
Between his Holiday
The morn was up -- the meadows out
The Fences all but ran,
Republic of Delight, I thought
Where each is Citizen --
From Heavy laden Lands to thee
Were seas to cross to come
A Caspian were crowded --
Too near thou art for Fame --
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by
Billy Collins
Walking Across The Atlantic
I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
before stepping onto the first wave.
Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
thinking about Spain,
checking for whales, waterspouts.
I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.
But for now I try to imagine what
this must look like to the fish below,
the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.
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by
Emily Dickinson
The lonesome for they know not What
The lonesome for they know not What --
The Eastern Exiles -- be --
Who strayed beyond the Amber line
Some madder Holiday --
And ever since -- the purple Moat
They strive to climb -- in vain --
As Birds -- that tumble from the clouds
Do fumble at the strain --
The Blessed Ether -- taught them --
Some Transatlantic Morn --
When Heaven -- was too common -- to miss --
Too sure -- to dote upon!
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by
Barry Tebb
THE LAST DAY OF ANOTHER HOME HOLIDAY
I sat on a low stone wall
Watching the blue blood of the azaleas
Spatter on Haworth’s cobbles.
A seamless transparency of rain
Lowering over the turning trees
My thoughts drifting to Claudel’s
‘Five Great Odes’, to the stone marker
To the swathes of heather.
I stood on the moor top
Where the tracks cross
The fellside green
The fellside ochre,
Shifting reflections
Of C?zanne’s last winter.
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by
Emily Dickinson
One Day is there of the Series
One Day is there of the Series
Termed Thanksgiving Day.
Celebrated part at Table
Part in Memory.
Neither Patriarch nor Pussy
I dissect the Play
Seems it to my Hooded thinking
Reflex Holiday.
Had there been no sharp Subtraction
From the early Sum --
Not an Acre or a Caption
Where was once a Room --
Not a Mention, whose small Pebble
Wrinkled any Sea,
Unto Such, were such Assembly
'Twere Thanksgiving Day.
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by
Katharine Tynan
Easter
Bring flowers to strew His way,
Yea, sing, make holiday;
Bid young lambs leap,
And earth laugh after sleep.
For now He cometh forth
Winter flies to the north,
Folds wings and cries
Amid the bergs and ice.
Yea, Death, great Death is dead,
And Life reigns in his stead;
Cometh the Athlete
New from dead Death's defeat.
Cometh the Wrestler,
But Death he makes no stir,
Utterly spent and done,
And all his kingdom gone.
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by
Lewis Carroll
Acrostic
Little maidens, when you look
On this little story-book,
Reading with attentive eye
Its enticing history,
Never think that hours of play
Are your only HOLIDAY,
And that in a HOUSE of joy
Lessons serve but to annoy:
If in any HOUSE you find
Children of a gentle mind,
Each the others pleasing ever--
Each the others vexing never--
Daily work and pastime daily
In their order taking gaily--
Then be very sure that they
Have a life of HOLIDAY.
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by
Anna Akhmatova
I hear the oriole's always-grieving voice
I hear the oriole's always-grieving voice,
And the rich summer's welcome loss I hear
In the sickle's serpentine hiss
Cutting the corn's ear tightly pressed to ear.
And the short skirts of the slim reapers
Fly in the wind like holiday pennants,
The clash of joyful cymbals, and creeping
From under dusty lashes, the long glance.
I don't expect love's tender flatteries,
In premonition of some dark event,
But come, come and see this paradise
Where together we were blessed and innocent.
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