The summers of Hesperides are long☀️

               
The summers of Hesperides are long    
     
for, this is my letter to the world,    
that never wrote to me...    
     
With quick wit, and impish, did easily    
dissolve into gaiety amid academy peers,    
     
from whence would deliver me into life's      
cadence so passionately, this brown wren.    
     
Are you too deeply occupied to say if    
my verse is alive?    
     
The mind is so near itself it cannot    
see distinctly, and I have none to ask.    
     
That you will not betray me it is needless    
to ask, since honor is its own pawn.    
     
Undressed thoughts that joggle the mind.    
The balm and smile to rise even higher    
     
than true, (and) to run the course through    
life's preceptor, or dare hope to be,    
     
this young spirit of a woman, yet    
unclaimed, by a nation of civil war.    
     
And yet, the long wait to obsess, this    
daughter in white, unrecognized, till comes    
     
Death, that would believe perhaps the bur    
of chestnut, with eyes of neglected sherry    
     
when guests have gone, thus to pacify the    
lack of a mould to identify not earthly image    
     
but shadow, to claim what eternal brilliance    
would nay arrive till winter of passing has    
     
long rendered, silent & still, of pen & quill,    
the breath of wind against the breadth of    
     
window pane that overlooks a village    
going by, keeping in and letting out,    
     
for had I a pleasure you had not,    
I could delight to bring it.  
 
 
©2016 Jade Pandora. All Rights Reserved.    
     
Preview piece: artwork by Frederick, Lord Leighton, 1892 (public domain)    
   
This poem placed first in the DUP competition "Monthly tribute #2: Emily Dickinson"
    
     
Dedicated to Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), with some of the lines in italics to indicate her actual words either from letter or verse.  I use archaic style throughout the piece.    
     
Unpublished in her lifetime, unknown at her death. Dickinson wrote in all, seventeen hundred and seventy-five poems, of which only seven were published in her lifetime, all anonymously.  A few select of her poems, were published in 1890, 1891, and 1896. More were published in 1914, and again in the 1920's, when their place in literature was at last recognized. Then finally, in 1950, Harvard University bought all available manuscripts and publishing rights, and has since published the complete poems and letters, each in three large volumes, edited by Thomas H. Johnson; an edition that cannot be too highly recommended to those who desire to explore further her life and work.  Scholars who wish to examine the exact original text should consult these three volumes.