Bring Me the Sunset in a Cup

Emily Dickinson · 1890

Catalog grade guidance: 8–12 — Short lyric; Todd/Higginson text of the three early series.

26 content lines · 137 words · Est. recitation about 1 min 23 sec (approx.)

Public-domain text for reading and recitation practice. Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #12242, Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete.Estimated time uses ~120 words/minute plus short pauses—not a contest rule.

XLII.

PROBLEMS.

Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning's flagons up,
   And say how many dew;
Tell me how far the morning leaps,
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
   Who spun the breadths of blue!

Write me how many notes there be
In the new robin's ecstasy
   Among astonished boughs;
How many trips the tortoise makes,
How many cups the bee partakes, --
   The debauchee of dews!

Also, who laid the rainbow's piers,
Also, who leads the docile spheres
   By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite,
Who counts the wampum of the night,
   To see that none is due?

Who built this little Alban house
And shut the windows down so close
   My spirit cannot see?
Who 'll let me out some gala day,
With implements to fly away,
   Passing pomposity?