Emily Dickinson's poems on the Robin

The Robin

The robin is the one

That interrupts the morn

With hurried, few, express reports

When March is scarcely on.

The robin is the one

That overflows the noon

With her cherubic quantity,

An April but begun.

The robin is the one

That speechless from her nest

Submits that home and certainty

And sanctity are best.

• Source: Dickenson, E. (1896). The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Series Two.Boston, MA: Roberts Brothers.

XIV

I DREADED that first robin so,
But he is mastered now,
And I ’m accustomed to him grown,—
He hurts a little, though.
I thought if I could only live	5
Till that first shout got by,
Not all pianos in the woods
Had power to mangle me.
I dared not meet the daffodils,
For fear their yellow gown	10
Would pierce me with a fashion
So foreign to my own.
I wished the grass would hurry,
So when ’t was time to see,
He ’d be too tall, the tallest one	15
Could stretch to look at me.
I could not bear the bees should come,
I wished they ’d stay away
In those dim countries where they go:
What word had they for me?	20
They ’re here, though; not a creature failed,
No blossom stayed away
In gentle deference to me,
The Queen of Calvary.
Each one salutes me as he goes,	25
And I my childish plumes
Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment
Of their unthinking drums.

Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1924; Bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/113/. [Date of Printout].

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