I cautious scanned my little life (19)
I cautious scanned my little life,
I winnowed what would fade
From what would last till heads like mine
Should be a-dreaming laid.
I put the latter in a barn,
The former blew away —
I went one winter morning,
And lo! my priceless hay
Was not upon the “‘scaffold”’,
Was not upon the “beam”,
And from a thriving farmer
A cynic I became.
Whether a thief did it —
Whether it was the wind —
Whether Deity ’s guiltless
My business is to find.
So I begin to ransack —
How is it, Heart, with thee?
Art thou within the little barn
Love provided thee?
From The Further Poems of Emily Dickinson (Little, Brown, and Company, 1929), edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson. This poem is in the public domain.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. While she was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. She died in Amherst in 1886, and the first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890.