Emily Dickinson sent more than 250 poems to her sister-in-law, Susan, including this fair copy written neatly in pencil on faintly ruled stationery paper.

The sun kept stooping – stooping – low –
The Hills to meet him – rose –
On his part – what Transaction!
On their part – what Repose!

Deeper and deeper grew the stain
Opon the window pane –
Thicker and thicker stood the feet
Until the Tyrian

Was crowded dense with Armies –
So gay – so Brigadier –
That I felt martial stirrings
Who once the Cockade wore –

Charged – from my chimney corner –
But nobody was there!

Emily Dickinson wrote this poem on a torn sheet of stationery paper, folded it in half, and sent it to her sister-in-law, Susan, in early 1864.

Two – were immortal – twice –
The privilege of few –
Eternity – obtained – in Time –
Reversed – Divinity –
That our ignoble Eyes
The Quality perceive
Of Paradise Superlative –
Thro' their – comparative.

Emily Dickinson carefully copied this poem—which exists in no other drafts—on to a sheet of “Paris” stationery paper for her sister-in-law, Susan, in 1870.

Distance – is not the Realm of Fox
Nor by Relay of Bird
Abated – Distance is
Until thyself, Beloved.

Emily Dickinson sent this poem to Elizabeth Holland, whom she had met nearly ten years before through Josiah Holland, Elizabeth’s husband and an editor at the Springfield Republican—the newspaper that printed five of Dickinson’s poems during her lifetime. 

The Wind begun to knead the Grass –
As Women do a Dough –
He flung a Hand full at the Plain –
A Hand full at the Sky –
The Leaves unhooked
themselves from Trees –
And started all abroad –
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands –
And throw away the Road –
The Wagons quick – ened on the Street –
The Thunders gossiped low –
The Lightning showed a Yellow Head –
And then a livid Toe –
The Birds put up the Bars to Nests –
The Cattle flung to Barns –
Then came one drop of Giant Rain –
And then, as if the Hands
That held the Dams – had parted hold –
The Waters Wrecked the Sky –
But overlooked my Father's House –
Just Quartering a Tree –

Note the unusual notches in the paper of this poem, which Emily Dickinson sent to Elizabeth Holland in 1862, one of the poet’s most productive years. 

The Day undressed – Herself –
Her Garter – was of Gold –
Her Petticoat – of Purple plain –
Her Dimities – as old

Exactly – as the World –
And yet the newest star –
Enrolled opon the Hemisphere
Be wrinkled – much as Her –

Too near to God – to pray –
Too near to Heaven – to fear –
The Lady – of the Occident
Retired without a care –

Her Candle so expire
The flickering be seen
On Ball of Mast in Bosporus –
And Dome – and Window Pane –

Emily Dickinson wrote this poem on the back of an invitation to a candy pulling party that George Gould, one of her brother’s friends, had sent her more than twenty-five years earlier. 

I suppose the time will come
Aid it in the coming
When the Bird will crowd the Tree
And the Bee be booming –

I suppose the time will come
Hinder it a little
When the Corn in Silk will dress
And in Chintc the Apple

I believe the Day will be
When the Jay will giggle
At his new white House the Earth
That, too, halt a little –

This is one of 295 poems Dickinson wrote in 1863, her most productive year. She kept this copy, along with a later draft from 1865.

Light is sufficient to itself –
If others want to see
It can be had on Window panes
Some hours of the day –

But not for Compensation –
It holds as large a Glow
To Squirrel in the Himmaleh
Precisely – as to me –

This poem—one of Dickinson’s most famous—exists in no other drafts; it is included in a in a fascicle, or hand-sewn manuscript booklet, which she probably began in the summer of 1863 and which was not discovered until after her death.

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –

With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –

Dickinson included this poem in one of her earliest fascicles. An early posthumous editor is likely responsible for extracting it from the booklet and vigorously crossing out the poem on the back. 

Bless God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast –
Grant God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest!

Please God, might I behold him
In epauletted white –
I should not fear the foe then –
I should not fear the fight!

Dickinson regularly employed long dashes to separate poems in her fascicles. My friend attacks my friend! appears on the lower half of the page. It exists in no other drafts and was not published until 1945.

My friend attacks my friend!
Oh Battle picturesque!
Then I turn Soldier too,
And he turns Satirist!
How martial is this place!
Had I a mighty gun
I think I'd shoot the human race
And then to glory run!

Emily Dickinson’s idiosyncratic use of punctuation is evident in this eight-line poem, which includes nine dashes.  One of her most iconic verses, it was also one of the first to be published after her death.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd banish us – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell your name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

This early draft, written on a torn sheet of stationery paper, includes many variants. Dickinson later sent clean copies of the poem to her sister-in-law, Susan, and friend Elizabeth Holland.

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King
But God be with the Clown
Who ponders this Tremendous scene
This sudden legacy of Green
As if it were his own –

Emily Dickinson collected sheet music and was an accomplished pianist. She penciled these notes on part of a program from an organ concert, which she may have attended, in 1873.

Of our deepest delights there is a solemn shyness
The appetite for silence is seldom an acquired taste

From 1840 until 1855, the Dickinson family lived in a house that overlooked the Amherst cemetery. She wrote this fragment on the back of a tiny sketch of a gravestone; it was first published in 1945.

Soul, take thy risk,
With Death to be
Were better than be not with thee

Emily Dickinson took an envelope addressed to “Mrs. Edward Dickinson and Family” and carefully tore away parts of it to form this unique shape. The poem exists in no other drafts.

The way Hope builds his House
It is not with a sill –
Nor Rafter – has that Edifice
But only Pinnacle –

Abode in as supreme
This superficies
As if it were of Ledges smit
Or mortised with the Laws –

Emily Dickinson drafted this poem after affixing clippings to the sheet with a three-cent postage stamp featuring a locomotive, which had first been issued the year before.

Alone and in a Circumstance
Reluctant to be told
A spider on my reticence
Assiduously crawled

And so much more at Home than I
Immediately grew
I felt myself a visitor
And hurriedly withdrew –

Revisiting my late abode
with articles of claim
I found it quietly assumed
as a Gymnasium

Where Tax asleep and Title off
The inmates of the Air
Perpetual presumption took
As each were special Heir –

If any strike me on the street
I can return the Blow –
If any take my property
According to the Law

The Statute is my Learned friend
But what redress can be
For an offence not here nor there
So not in Equity –

That Larceny of time and mind
The marrow of the Day
By spider, or forbid it Lord
That I should specify –

Emily Dickinson sent copies of this poem to many friends and correspondents including Helen Hunt Jackson, Mabel Loomis Todd, and her niece Fanny Norcross. 

A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel
A Resonance of Emerald
A Rush of Cochineal

And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts it's tumbled Head –
The Mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy Morning's Ride –

First drafted in 1859, Success is counted sweetest is Dickinson’s only poem printed in a book during her lifetime. The volume of anonymous verse was part of a series published from 1876–1887.

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to–day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear!

This is one of Dickinson’s ten poems that were printed during her lifetime. It appeared in the Springfield Republican in 1866 with an added title—“The Snake”—and altered punctuation.

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides –
You may have met Him – did you not
His notice sudden is –

The Grass divides as with a Comb –
A spotted shaft is seen –
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on –

He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot –
I more than once at Noon

Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone –

Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me –
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality –

But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone –

Emily Dickinson began drafting this poem in 1862, and at least one of her early drafts have been lost. The extant manuscript drafts all differ slightly from the version as published here, with the added title "Sunset," in The Springfield Daily Republican. The transcription below is from the earliest extant draft, which Dickinson included in one of her fascicles.

Blazing in Gold – and
Quenching – in Purple!
Leaping – like Leopards the sky –
Then – at the feet of the old Horizon –
Laying it's spotted face – to die!

Stooping as low as the kitchen window –
Touching the Roof –
And tinting the Barn –
Kissing it's Bonnet to the Meadow –
And the Juggler of Day – is gone!

Emily Dickinson returned to this poem over the course of nearly twenty-five years. She sent drafts to her sister-in-law, Susan, and to the editor Samuel Bowles, but also retained two copies in her private papers. Newspaper editors added the title “October” when publishing it in 1864.

These are the days when Birds come back –
A very few – a Bird or two,
To take a final look –

These are the days when skies resume
The old – old sophistries of June –
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And swiftly thro' the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf –

Oh Sacrament of summer days!
Oh last Communion in the Haze –
Permit a Child to join –

Thy sacred emblems to partake –
Thy consecrated bread to take –
And thine immortal wine –

Emily Dickinson began working on this poem in 1861. It was printed in 1864 – with the added title “My Sabbath” – from a draft that has since been lost.

Some keep the Sabbath going to church,
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.

Some keep the Sabbath in surplice,
I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.

God preachesa noted clergyman,
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of going to heaven at last,
I'm going all along

Emily Dickinson’s favorite flower was the ghostly Indian pipe, also known as the corpse plant. She drafted this poem on a fragment of ruled stationery paper in 1879; no other copy exists. 

'Tis whiter than an Indian Pipe –
'Tis dimmer than a Lace –
No stature has it, like a Fog
When you approach the place –
Not any voice imply it here –
Or intimate it there –
A spirit – how doth it accost –
What function hath the Air?
This limitless Hyperbole
Each one of us shall be –
'Tis Drama – if Hypothesis
It be not Tragedy –

Dickinson wrote the only surviving draft of this poem in a fascicle in 1862, but returned to it later to add some alternate word choices in pencil. 

It was not Death, for I stood up,
And all the Dead, lie down –
It was not Night, for all the Bells
Put out their Tongues, for Noon.

It was not Frost, for on my Flesh
I felt Siroccos – crawl –
Nor Fire – for just my marble feet
Could keep a Chancel, cool –

And yet, it tasted, like them all,
The Figures I have seen
Set orderly, for Burial,
Reminded me, of mine –

As if my life were shaven,
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key,
And 'twas like Midnight, some –

When everything that ticked – has stopped –
And space stares – all around –
Or Grisly frosts – first Au – tumn morns,
Repeal the Beating Ground –

But, most, like Chaos – Stopless – cool –
Without a Chance, or spar –
Or even a Report of Land –
To justify – Despair.

Emily Dickinson drafted this poem on the interior of an envelope that had been addressed to her sister, Lavinia. The unusual shape of the paper underscores the drama in this late poem.

A Pang is more conspicuous in Spring
In contrast with the things that sing
Not Birds entirely – but Minds –
And Winds – Minute Effulgencies
When what they sung for is undone
Who cares about a Blue Bird's Tune –
Why, Resurrection had to wait
Till they had moved a Stone –