[Skip Navigation]

Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

The Frost was never seen—

Emily Dickinson

1202

The Frost was never seen—
If met, too rapid passed,
Or in too unsubstantial Team—
The Flowers notice first

A Stranger hovering round
A Symptom of alarm
In Villages remotely set
But search effaces him

Till some retrieveless Night
Our Vigilance at waste
The Garden gets the only shot
That never could be traced.

Unproved is much we know—
Unknown the worst we fear—
Of Strangers is the Earth the Inn
Of Secrets is the Air—

To analyze perhaps
A Philip would prefer
But Labor vaster than myself
I find it to infer.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson | Written c. 1871
Add Keyword Tags

Separate each tag with a space. You may add as many tags as you'd like to each poem.

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.

More Info

This site will work and look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any Internet device.