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Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems

Part Four: Time and Eternity 6. My cocoon tightens, colors tease

FROM THE CHRYSALIS.


My cocoon tightens, colors tease,

I'm feeling for the air;

A dim capacity for wings

Degrades the dress I wear.


A power of butterfly must be

The aptitude to fly,

Meadows of majesty concedes

And easy sweeps of sky.


So I must baffle at the hint

And cipher at the sign,

And make much blunder, if at last

I take the clew divine.