HEART not so heavy as mine,
Wending late home,
As it passed my window
Whistled itself a tune,—
A careless snatch, a ballad,
A ditty of the street;
Yet to my irritated ear
An anodyne so sweet,
It was as if a bobolink,
Sauntering this way,
Carolled and mused and carolled,
Then bubbled slow away.
It was as if a chirping brook
Upon a toilsome way
Set bleeding feet to minuets
Without the knowing why.~Emily dickinson
To-morrow, night will come again,
Weary, perhaps, and sore.
Ah, bugle, by my window,
I pray you stroll once more!
Life has felt heavy lately–heavy and overwhelming. It’s crammed full of things–obligations, challenges, setbacks, disappointments, unpleasant surprises. This poem captures beautifully the heaviness of the soul without going into specifics–we know that the speaker is weighed down. But the point of it all is the moment of sweetness, the unexpected beauty of a song sung by a passerby. Even at its heaviest, life offers us these moments, scattered like seafoam, glittering against the somber background of the everyday.
No matter how busy you are, how distracted, how overwhelmed, how overburdened, may you find your anodyne today.
The Emily Project 