To learn the transport by the pain
Emily Dickinson · 1891
Public domain
From Poems by Emily Dickinson, published in 1891. The text is free of copyright in the United States. This copy is the poem, without the Project Gutenberg header.
To learn the transport by the pain,
As blind men learn the sun;
To die of thirst, suspecting
That brooks in meadows run;
To stay the homesick, homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore
Haunted by native lands, the while,
And blue, beloved air --
This is the sovereign anguish,
This, the signal woe!
These are the patient laureates
Whose voices, trained below,
Ascend in ceaseless carol,
Inaudible, indeed,
To us, the duller scholars
Of the mysterious bard!