Ririro.com - Poetry

"A Cloud withdrew from the Sky" is a short poem in which a speaker watches a glorious cloud and its attendants vanish for good. Regret hangs over every line: had the speaker looked longer and stored that glow in memory, it might still offer comfort. Instead, a resolve forms to never again pass an angel with a mere glance and a bow. In just twelve lines, wonder turns into a quiet vow. Become a supp...

"A Coffin — is a small Domain" is a short poem that sets the smallest of spaces against the largest of ideas. In three compact stanzas, Emily Dickinson's speaker measures a coffin and a grave, then finds both wider than the sun, the seas and the lands. The mood is hushed and contemplative, yet strangely expansive. The tension lies in the contrast between a "diminished Plane" and the boundless reac...

"A Counterfeit — a Plated Person —" is a short poem in which Emily Dickinson refuses to live as a fake, whatever flaws may lie beneath her nature. In just a few lines, the speaker sets truth against lies, comparing honesty to good health, safety and open sky. A lie becomes a meagre exile, one that still speaks when we die. Compact and sharply worded, it asks what kind of self you are willing to be...

"A curious Cloud surprised the Sky" is a short poem that turns an ordinary sky into a small drama. A strange, antlered cloud drifts in against a sheet of blue, hanging so low it nearly brushes the lawns. Then it changes. It rises, grows statelier, and trails away like royal robes. In just a few lines, Dickinson's playful wonder gives way to awe, and the speaker compares the cloud to a queen. Becom...

"Above Oblivion's Tide there is a Pier" is a compact poem that imagines a lone refuge rising over the waters of forgetting. Only an unnamed "Few" reach it, and the speaker insists they are not carried there but lift themselves. Fame, personified as armless and offering a single meagre smile, cannot help them. In just a few lines, Dickinson sets the lasting against the fleeting, and asks who truly...

"Abraham to kill him—" is a short poem that retells the biblical sacrifice of Isaac with dry, startling wit. An aged Abraham is told to kill his son, the boy an "Urchin," and he complies without a flicker of hesitation. Dickinson's clipped dashes turn obedience into a question of flattery and tyranny. The final stanza adds a sly moral about a mastiff and manners, leaving readers to decide how seri...

"Absence disembodies—so does Death" is a compact Emily Dickinson poem that weighs two kinds of vanishing against each other. A loved one's absence and the finality of death both hide a person from the Earth, yet the speaker finds that superposition and love may soften the loss. Spare and quietly aching, the lines ask whether tenderness fades the more we try to prove it, leaving readers with a ques...

"Absent Place—an April Day" is a brief Emily Dickinson poem that sets blooming daffodils against the ache of those who cannot see them. In just two stanzas, spring's bright arrival stirs a homesick curiosity in souls still buried under snow. The poem is quiet but sharp, weighing the delight of April against the deeper drifts that can pile up inside a person. Its compressed images ask what it means...

"A darting fear—a pomp—a tear" is a four-line poem that compresses a whole emotional arc into a single breath. Fear flickers, ceremony passes, a tear falls, and then comes a quiet morning waking. The speaker rises to find that the thing they waited and hoped for has taken in a different dawn. Dickinson leaves the loss and the longing unnamed, so each reader supplies their own. It rewards a slow se...

"A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!" is a short poem that turns an ordinary morning into a battlefield. The speaker cries out for help, then asks a passer-by for prayers, sensing that a plain day, like a common ball, might hold the seed of a victory. The mood tightens line by line, from urgent plea to steadying self-command. In the closing lines the speaker braces her own soul, aware that great conse...

"A Death blow is a Life blow to Some" is a short poem that turns a familiar idea on its head in just four lines. Emily Dickinson imagines people who never truly came alive until the moment they died, and who might have died inwardly had they gone on living. Death and vitality swap places, leaving a quiet paradox about what it means to live. Read it online and decide what you make of its riddle. Be...

"A Deed knocks first at Thought" is a short poem that traces how an action takes shape inside the mind. Emily Dickinson pictures a deed knocking at the door of thought, then at the door of will, which she calls the "manufacturing spot." From there the deed either steps out as an act or lies entombed in silence, where only God can hear its doom. It is a compact, quietly unsettling look at intention...

"A Dew sufficed itself—" is a short poem by Emily Dickinson that follows a single dewdrop on a leaf at dawn. Content and quietly proud, the Dew feels the vastness of its destiny and the triviality of life all at once. Then the Sun goes to work and the Day goes out to play, and the drop vanishes without a trace. Dickinson treats this tiny disappearance with mock-solemn gravity, leaving readers to w...

A Diamond on the Hand is a compact Emily Dickinson poem that turns a familiar jewel into a quiet study of desire. Once a gem sits on a hand, custom dulls its wonder, yet in a seller's shrine it still stirs longing in those who gaze and sigh. Dickinson sets possession against yearning, and sketches the restless fear that someone else might buy what the watcher cannot. In just a few lines, it asks w...

"A Dimple in the Tomb" is a poem by Emily Dickinson that fits an entire meditation on death into just nine words. A single small, tender mark, a dimple, enters a cold and ferocious space and changes what it means. The poem sets the harshness of the grave against the warmth of belonging, leaving readers to wonder who that dimple belonged to and how such a small detail can turn fear into something c...

"A Door just opened on a street" is a short Emily Dickinson poem about a lost passerby who glimpses warmth, wealth and company for a single instant. A door swings open, a room full of light and belonging is revealed, and then it closes again. The speaker is left on the cold street, and the brief contrast makes her loneliness sharper. In just two stanzas, the poem turns a fleeting moment into an ac...

"A Doubt If It Be Us" is a poem by Emily Dickinson that follows the mind in the first shock of anguish. In just eight lines, a staggering speaker finds that doubt and unreality act as a "merciful Mirage," a fragile bridge across unbearable pain. The tension lies in the strange mercy of disbelief, which makes living possible while it suspends the lives it protects. Dickinson's compressed imagery re...

"Adrift! A little boat adrift!" is a short poem that follows a small vessel lost on the water as night falls. Emily Dickinson sets a cry for guidance against the words of sailors and angels, each telling a different version of what happened to the boat. Dusk brings struggle and despair, while dawn brings a surprising turn. In just three stanzas, the poem asks how much a battered little boat can en...

"A Drunkard cannot meet a Cork" is a short poem that turns a simple January fly into a spark of intoxicating memory. A speaker is sent reeling by Jamaicas of remembrance, while the moderate drinker of delight misses the true spring. With playful wit and vivid imagery, the poem sets the jug against the joy and leaves the bumble bee as the true connoisseur's guide. Read it online and savor its tipsy...

"Advance is Life's condition" is a short poem by Emily Dickinson that treats death as a relay rather than a final stop. In two compact stanzas, the speaker argues that the grave only seems hateful because we mistake it for a terminus. The unlit tunnel, a life hemmed in by walls, still beats not existing at all. The poem sets a stark image of darkness against stubborn forward movement and asks what...

"A Dying Tiger—moaned for Drink" is a short poem in which a speaker crosses the desert sand to find water for a dying tiger. The speaker catches a few drops from a rock and carries them back in one hand, racing against time. The mood is tense and sorrowful, and the final stanza turns to blame and guilt. Dickinson asks whether a rescue that comes too late can be anyone's fault, or whether the plain...

"A face devoid of love or grace" is a six-line poem in which Emily Dickinson sketches a portrait in stark, chilling strokes. The speaker studies a hateful, hard, successful face, one so cold that even a stone would feel at home beside it, like old acquaintances meeting for the first time. Brief and sharp, the poem sets surface triumph against inner emptiness and leaves you weighing what success co...

"A faded Boy—in sallow Clothes" is a short poem by Emily Dickinson that follows a pale, threadbare cowherd driving his lonesome cow toward the pastures of Oblivion. In just two stanzas, the boy is revealed as a statesman's embryo, a future that never arrives. The poem turns wistful as whistling boys and grateful cows vanish into a ballad's barn, leaving only a faint memory of clover and a lingerin...

A Feather from the Whippoorwill is a compact poem that turns a single bird's song into a riddle of sunrise galleries and spring operas. Emily Dickinson piles up gleaming images: an emerald nest spun by the Ages from mellow, murmuring thread, and a beryl egg that schoolboys hunt during recess, high overhead. The speaker never names the singer outright, so the reader is invited to guess, wonder, and...

"A Field of Stubble, lying sere" is a short poem that pictures a harvested New England field under a second sun, its crop already gathered and its stubble left bare. Emily Dickinson sets the labor of the farm hands beside the quiet fate of their triumphs, then lets a timid, hesitant bird approach the field for scraps. Spare and image-driven, the poem rewards slow reading and leaves you thinking ab...