The Poetry Corner

The Waking Year.

By Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

A lady red upon the hill Her annual secret keeps; A lady white within the field In placid lily sleeps! The tidy breezes with their brooms Sweep vale, and hill, and tree! Prithee, my pretty housewives! Who may expected be? The neighbors do not yet suspect! The woods exchange a smile -- Orchard, and buttercup, and bird -- In such a little while! And yet how still the landscape stands, How nonchalant the wood, As if the resurrection Were nothing very odd!