The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants - (1350)
The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants -
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop opon a Spot
As if it tarried always
And yet it’s whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay -
And fleeter than a Tare -
’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler -
The Germ of Alibi -
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie -
I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit -
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer’s circumspect.
Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn -
Had Nature an Apostate -
That Mushroom - it is Him!
Notes:
The Poetry Foundation often receives questions about Emily Dickinson's poems. Read a note from the digital archive editor about Dickinson's "errors."
Copyright Credit: The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin, Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University of Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955, by the Presiednt and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1979, 1983, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L. Hampson.
Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998)