One Need Not be a Chamber — to be Haunted
One need not be a chamber—to be haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain—has Corridors surpassing
Material Place—
Far safer, of a Midnight—meeting
External Ghost—
Than an Interior—confronting—
That cooler—Host—
Far safer, through an Abbey—gallop—
The Stones a’chase—
Than moonless—One’s A’self encounter—
In lonesome place—
Ourself—behind Ourself—Concealed—
Should startle—most—
Assassin—hid in Our Apartment—
Be Horror’s least—
The Prudent—carries a Revolver—
He bolts the Door,
O’erlooking a Superior Spectre
More near—
From The Poems of Emily Dickinson Variorum Edition, ed. R. W. Franklin, 3 vols (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1998).
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.