Bee! I'm expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due --

The Frogs got Home last Week --
Are settled, and at work --
Birds, mostly back --
The Clover warm and thick --

You'll get my Letter by
The Seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me --
Yours, Fly.

About the headline (FAQ)

Confirmed with The Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. R.W. Franklin, Volume 2, Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998, Poem 983.

Text Authorship:

• by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Bolts of Melody, first published 1945 [author's text checked 2 times 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 John Woods Duke (1899 - 1984), "Bee! I'm expecting you!", 1968, published 1978 [ soprano and piano ], from Six Poems by Emily Dickinson, no. 6, Southern Music Publishing Co. Inc., New York and Peer Musikverlag GMbH, Hamburg [sung text not yet checked]
• by Ricky Ian Gordon (b. 1956), "Bee! I'm expecting you!", first performed 2000 [ soprano and piano ], from Too Few the Mornings Be. Eleven Songs for Soprano and Piano, no. 6, Carl Fischer Music [sung text not yet checked]
• by Julian Philips (b. 1969), "A letter", 1997/2002, published 2007 [ high voice and piano ], from An Amherst Bestiary, no. 12, Peters Edition [sung text checked 1 time]
• by James Sclater , "Bee! I'm expecting you!", 1972 [ soprano and clarinet ], from Four Songs on Texts of Emily Dickinson, no. 4 [sung text checked 1 time]

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

• GER German (Deutsch) (Sharon Krebs) , copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
• GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , no title, copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this page: Sharon Krebs [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2004-05-30
Line count: 12
Word count: 49

Biene! Ich erwarte dich!
Seist fällig eigentlich,
erzählte gestern ich
einem, den du kennst.

Seit letzter Woche sind
die Frösche hier am Werk,
die meisten Vögel auch,
der Klee steht warm und dicht.

Bis Siebzehnten erreicht
mein Brief dich; schreib zurück;
noch besser, du kommst gleich -
Gruß, Fliege.