Glee! the great storm is over!
Four have recovered the land;
Forty gone down together
Into the boiling sand.
Ring, for the scant salvation!
Toll, for the bonnie souls,—
Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
Spinning upon the shoals!
How they will tell the shipwreck
When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, “But the forty?
Did they come back no more?”
Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller’s eye;
And the children no further question,
And only the waves reply.
Credits
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American poet from Amherst, Massachusetts, now regarded as one of the most original voices in English-language poetry. She published fewer than a dozen poems in her lifetime, yet left behind nearly 1,800 works discovered after her death. "Glee! the Storm is Over" showcases her characteristic use of hymn-like meter and stark tonal reversal, turning a single exclamation of relief into a meditation on collective grief.
