Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Emily Dickinson

1715

Consulting summer’s clock,
But half the hours remain.
I ascertain it with a shock—
I shall not look again.
The second half of joy
Is shorter than the first.
The truth I do not dare to know
I muffle with a jest.

Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

What are tags?
Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

« Previous