The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts [the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude]2 no more.

Unmoved, she notes the [chariot's]2 pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)
¹ Getty: "the door,/ To her divine majority/ Present"
² Getty: "chariots"

Text Authorship:

• by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1890 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Robert F. Baksa (b. 1938), "The soul selects her own society", published 1977 [ voice, piano ], from Emily Dickinson Songs, no. 5 [sung text not yet checked]
• by Gordon Getty (b. 1933), "The soul selects her own society" [ soprano and piano ], from The White Election - A Song Cycle for soprano and piano on 32 poems of Emily Dickinson, Part 2 : So We Must Meet Apart, no. 11 [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Alistair Hinton (b. 1950), "Exclusion", op. 40 no. 4 [ high soprano and piano ], from Six Songs for high soprano and piano, no. 4 [sung text not yet checked]
• by Jitka Koželuhová (b. 1966), "The soul", 1991-92, copyright © 1997 [ soprano and piano ], from Six Songs on Poems of Emily Dickinson, no. 4 [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

• GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , no title, copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 12
Word count: 53