Images: Amherst College Archives and Special Collections

• Molly Peacock, a poet and a creative nonfiction writer. She is the author most recently of The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72

• Molly Peacock

Tell all the Truth (1129)

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

The Props assist the House (729)
By Emily Dickinson

The Props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw
And adequate, erect,
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Augur and the Carpenter —
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life —
A Past of Plank and Nail
And slowness — then the scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul —

from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Copyright ©1945, 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R.W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)