Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924. |
Part Two: Nature
XXV
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| THE MUSHROOM is the elf of plants, | |
| At evening it is not; | |
| At morning in a truffled hut | |
| It stops upon a spot | |
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| As if it tarried always; | 5 |
| And yet its whole career | |
| Is shorter than a snake’s delay, | |
| And fleeter than a tare. | |
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| ’T is vegetation’s juggler, | |
| The germ of alibi; | 10 |
| Doth like a bubble antedate, | |
| And like a bubble hie. | |
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| I feel as if the grass were pleased | |
| To have it intermit; | |
| The surreptitious scion | 15 |
| Of summer’s circumspect. | |
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| Had nature any outcast face, | |
| Could she a son contemn, | |
| Had nature an Iscariot, | |
| That mushroom,—it is him. | 20 |
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