“A precious, mouldering pleasure 't isTo meet an antique bookIn just the dress his century wore;A privilege, I think,His venerable hand to take,And warming in our own,A passage back, or two, to makeTo times when he was young.His quaint opinions to inspect,His knowledge to unfoldOn what concerns our mutual mind,The literature of old...”

American poet

Emily Dickinson was an American poet. She was largely unpublished and little known during her lifetime, but her work is now regarded as part of the literary canon. The Poetry Foundation describes her writing as creating a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. Her poems are often read for their compressed style and for the way they open up feeling, thought, and possibility with unusual precision.