Emily Dickinson

The reclusive Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 2,000 poems, covering the themes of life and death, immortality and the grave, solitude and society, nature and mankind, isolation and election. One of America’s great poets, her work has been set by scores of composers.

Photo: Emily Dickinson, 1846-1847, public domain.

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    About

    Emily Dickinson selected her own society, and it was rarely that of other people. She preferred the solitude of her white-washed poet’s room, or the birds, bees, and flowers of her garden, to the visitations of family and friends. But for three occasions in her life she never left her native Amherst, Massachusetts; for the last 20 of her 56 years, she rarely left her house. And yet her reclusive existence in no way restricted her abundant life of the imagination. Her letters and poems reveal her to be an inspired visionary and a true original of American literature.

    Belle of Amherst
    Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born to a prominent Amherst family on December 10, 1830. A successful lawyer and later Congressman and judge, Dickinson’s father had been a founder of Amherst College. Dickinson’s girlhood was spent in the usual flurry of feminine activities of the day. She enjoyed a reputation as the witty Belle of Amherst for a time, and she spent a year away from home at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, from 1847 to 1848.

    Somewhere in her late teens, however, Dickinson began to sense her “otherness.” At Holyoke she refused to confess her Congregationalist faith. After her return home, she began to write her first serious poems, though she kept these jealously guarded to herself. In 1856, her adored older brother Austin married Susan Gilbert, and came to live next door to the paternal homestead. Susan offered the poet support, friendship, and understanding throughout their lives, and it was to Susan that Emily confided a few of her poems.

    Recluse
    The early 1860’s saw Dickinson withdraw even deeper into herself, perhaps as the result of an emotional crisis whose origins elude biographers. She seemed to prefer distance to social intercourse–she would decline an invitation to her brother’s house in an exquisitely crafted poem, for example–and she was far more comfortable in literary relationships, maintaining an active, intimate, even passionate correspondence with literary and religious figures from the outside world such as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who visited her twice in Amherst, the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, and Samuel Bowles, the editor of the Springfield Republican, which had published a few of her verses.

    After Emily’s death in 1886, Mabel Loomis Todd, a cultured and beautiful socialite, who was also her brother Austin’s mistress, sought Higginson’s assistance in publishing three editions of Emily’s poems and two volumes of her letters, which initially won Dickinson recognition as a minor eccentric poet. Her true genius has only been acknowledged more recently, as her cryptic language, dense symbols, fragmentary thought, and punctuation have been decoded to reveal a voice of mystic clarity and fiery individuality. Her work charts the landscape of a human soul, whose self-imposed confines conversely became agents of imaginative transformation.

    Called Back
    To the tiny New England graveyard, across the fields where in girlhood Emily Dickinson had watched the funeral cortèges wend their way, a solemn procession carried the white-robed remains of the poet, who died in her home on May 15, 1886. The epitaph her sister Lavinia later had inscribed on her tombstone–“E.D. Called Back”–tersely reminds visitors of a life lived in realms beyond the temporal.

    –Thomas Hampson and Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold, PBS I Hear America Singing

    Photo: Academy of American Poets

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    I see thee better — in the Dark —

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    I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed

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    If I...

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    If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking

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    If I’m lost—now

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    Let Us play Yesterday —

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    Me — come! My dazzled face

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    My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun —

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    Of Course — I prayed —

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    Of Tolling Bell I ask the cause?

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    Papa above!

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    Paradise

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    Savior! I've no one else to tell —

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    She bore it till the simple veins

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    Softened by Time's consummate plush

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    That Such have died enable Us

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    The Angle of a Landscape —

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    The Bobolink is gone —

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    The face I carry with me — last —

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    The first Day's Night had come —

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    The Grass So Little Has To Do

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    The Heart

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    The Heart asks—Pleasure first

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    The Level Bee (op. 105, no. 10)

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    The Little Stone

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    The Loneliness One dare not sound

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    The Martyr Poets — did not tell —

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    Emily Dickinson

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    The Morns are Meeker

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    The Mountain sat upon the Plain

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    The Mountains stood in Haze —

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    Emily Dickinson

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    The Poets light but Lamps —

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    The Rose Did Caper on Her Cheek

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    The Show is Not the Show

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    The Simple Days

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    Emily Dickinson

    The Sun Kept Setting

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    The Sun kept setting — setting — still

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    Emily Dickinson

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    The Sun Went Down

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    The White Diadem

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    Emily Dickinson

    The Wind Begun to Rock the Grass

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    Emily Dickinson

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    The Wind—tapped like a tired Man

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    Emily Dickinson

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    The World Feels Dusty

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    There came a Day at Summer's full

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    Emily Dickinson

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    There Came a Wind Like a Bugle

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    This Little Rose

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    Emily Dickinson

    'Tis Not That Dying Hurts Us So

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    Emily Dickinson

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    There Came a Wind Like a Bugle

    Lee Hoiby

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    There came a Wind like a Bugle

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    There is a pain — so utter —

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    Emily Dickinson

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    There's a certain Slant of light

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    Emily Dickinson

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    There's a Certain Slant of Light

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    These are the days when Birds come back

    George Perle

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    These Strangers, in a foreign World

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    Three Graces for Hildur

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    They Might Not Need Me

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    They shut me up in Prose —

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    This is my letter to the World

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    Through lane it lay — through bramble —

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    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Childe Emilie

    Tie The Strings To My Life (op. 107, no. 2)

    Arthur Farwell

    Emily Dickinson

    Title divine — is mine!

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: The Marigold Heart

    To Make a Prairie

    Jake Heggie

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: From Emily's Garden

    To Make a Prairie

    Lori Laitman

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: One Bee and Revery

    To pile like Thunder to its close

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: The White Diadem

    'Twas the old — road — through pain —

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Beyond Circumference

    Tinted Mountains

    Song Collection

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    O Friend!

    Ernst Bacon

    Emily Dickinson

    On this Wondrous Sea

    Ernst Bacon

    Emily Dickinson

    Our Share of Night to Bear

    Otto Luening

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Nine Songs to Poems of Emily Dickinson

    Under the Light, yet under

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Tinted Mountains

    Under the Light, yet under

    George Perle

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Thirteen Dickinson Songs

    Unto Me (op. 101, no. 2)

    Arthur Farwell

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Four Emily Dickinson Songs, Op. 101

    Up Life's Hill with my my little Bundle

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Childe Emilie

    Upon his Saddle sprung a Bird

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: The Celestial Thrush

    Upon This Summer's Day

    Song Collection

    Juliana Hall

    Emily Dickinson

    Velvet People

    Ernst Bacon

    Emily Dickinson

    We dream — it is good we are dreaming —

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Beyond Circumference

    We Never Know How High We Are

    Robert Beaser

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Four Dickinson Songs

    We talked as Girls do —

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Childe Emilie

    What if I say I shall not wait!

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Beyond Circumference

    What if I say I shall not wait!

    George Perle

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Thirteen Dickinson Songs

    What If I Say I Shall Not Wait!

    Richard Pearson Thomas

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: At Last, To Be Identified

    What shall I do — it whimpers so —

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: The Marigold Heart

    When I Hoped, I Feared

    Otto Luening

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Nine Songs to Poems of Emily Dickinson

    When They Come Back

    Aaron Copland

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson

    Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?

    Aaron Copland

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson

    Wild Nights

    Ernst Bacon

    Emily Dickinson

    Wild Nights — Wild Nights! (op. 112, no. 1)

    Arthur Farwell

    Emily Dickinson

    Wild Nights

    Lee Hoiby

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Four Dickinson Songs

    Wild Nights

    Lori Laitman

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Days and Nights

    Wild Nights

    David Leisner

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Confiding

    Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: The Marigold Heart

    Wild Nights! Wild Nights!

    Richard Pearson Thomas

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: At Last, To Be Identified

    Will There Really Be a Morning?

    Ricky Ian Gordon

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: A Horse With Wings

    Will There Really Be a Morning?

    Richard Hundley

    Emily Dickinson

    Will There Really Be a Morning?

    Lori Laitman

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Four Dickinson Songs

    Will there really be a morning?

    André Previn

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Three Dickinson Songs

    Within my Garden, rides a Bird

    Leo Smit

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: The Celestial Thrush

    Women's Voices

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    Emily Dickinson

    Christina Rossetti

    Elinor Wylie

    Videos

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    Sheet Music

    A Horse With Wings

    Composer(s): Ricky Ian Gordon

    Song(s): Once I Was
    Sweet Song
    Afternoon on a Hill
    My Sister's New Red Hat
    A Horse with Wings
    Air
    Poem (Lana Turner has Collapsed)
    The Lake Isle of Innisfree
    The Spring and the Fall
    Souvenir
    Coyotes
    The Red Dress
    What Shall We Remember?
    Will There Really Be a Morning?
    Sycamore Trees
    Fewer Words
    The Special Picnic
    Janet Underneath the Roses
    I am a Cherry Alive
    An Old-Fashioned Song
    White Haired Woman

    Buy via Hal Leonard

    A Letter

    Composer(s): Lee Hoiby

    Voice Type: High

    Buy via Sheet Music Plus

    Arthur Farwell Sheet Music
    (Emily Dickinson songs)

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    Childe Emilie

    Composer(s): Leo Smit

    Song(s): 1. I was the slightest in the House
    2. Through lane it lay - through bramble
    3. It troubled me as once I was
    4. The Child's faith is new
    5. Softened by Time's consummate plush
    6. Papa above!
    7. We talked as Girls do
    8. They shut me up in Prose
    9. I cried at Pity - not at Pain
    10. Let Us play Yesterday
    11. A loss of something ever felt I
    12. Good Morning - Midnight
    13. Up Life's Hill with my little Bundle
    14. I'm ceded - I've stopped being Theirs

    Voice Type: Mezzo-Soprano, Soprano

    Buy via Theodore Presser Company

    Days and Nights

    Composer(s): Lori Laitman

    Song(s): 1. Along With Me
    2. They Might Not Need Me
    3. The Night has a Thousand Eyes
    4. Over the Fence
    5. Song
    6. Wild Nights

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    Elegiac Songs

    Composer(s): John Harbison

    Voice Type: Mezzo-soprano

    Buy via Schirmer

    Four Dickinson Songs

    Composer(s): Robert Beaser

    Song(s): 1. A Word is Dead
    2. It Was Not Death
    3. I Dwell in Possibility
    4. We Never Know How High We Are

    Buy via Schott Music

    Four Dickinson Songs

    Composer(s): Lee Hoiby

    Voice Type: High

    Buy via Sheet Music Plus

    Four Dickinson Songs (High Key)

    Composer(s): Lori Laitman

    Song(s): 1. Will There Really Be a Morning?
    2. I'm Nobody
    3. She Died
    4. If I...

    Voice Type: High

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    Four Dickinson Songs (Low key)

    Composer(s): Lori Laitman

    Song(s): 1. Will There Really Be a Morning?
    2. I'm Nobody
    3. She Died
    4. If I...

    Voice Type: Low

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    Have You Got a Brook in Your Little Heart?

    Composer(s): Etta Parker

    Find it at your Local Library

    In This Short Life

    Composer(s): Lori Laitman

    Song(s): 1. Some Keep the Sabbath
    2. I Stepped From Plank to Plank
    3. In This Short Life

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    Life Signs: Six Songs on Texts by Emily Dickinson

    Composer(s): Robert G. Patterson

    Song(s): 1. Surgeons must be very careful!
    2. I Years had been from Home
    3. The Drop, that wrestles in the Sea
    4. A little Snow was here and there
    5. I’m Nobody! Who are you?
    6. I should not dare to leave my friend

    Free via IMSLP

    Nine Songs to Poems of Emily Dickinson

    Composer(s): Otto Luening

    Song(s): 1. Our Share of Night to Bear
    2. The Show is Not the Show
    3. Hope is the Thing with Feathers
    4. If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking
    5. Experiment to Me
    6. I Felt a Cleavage in my Mind
    7. Few Yet Enough
    8. Soul, Wilt Thou Toss Again?
    9. When I Hoped, I Feared

    Buy via E. C. Schirmer

    Songs By John Duke, Vol. 1

    Composer(s): John Duke

    Song(s): 1. When the Rose Is Brightest (Nathaniel Parker Willis)
    2. Stopping by Woods on а Snowy Evening (Robert Frost)
    3. The Puritan's Ballad (Elinor Wylie)
    4. Midcentury Love Letter (Phyllis McGinley)
    5. All Beauty Calls You to Me (Sara Teasdale)
    6. Listen, I Love You (Sara Teasdale)
    7. I am so weak а Thing (Sara Teasdale)
    8. All Things in the World Can Rest, But I (Sara Teasdale)
    9. Oh, My Love (Sara Teasdale)
    10. Renouncement (Alice Meynell)
    11. Noonday (Traditional Chinese)
    12. Through Your Window (Traditional Chinese)
    13. The Shoreless Sea (Traditional Chinese)
    14. New Feet within My Garden Go (Emily Dickinson)
    15. The Rose did Caper on Her Cheek (Emily Dickinson)
    16. Have You Got а Brook in Your Little Heart? (Emily Dickinson)
    17. I Taste а Liquor Never Brewed (Emily Dickinson)
    18. The Better Part (George Santayana)

    Voice Type: High

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    Late Summer

    Composer(s): Tom Cipullo

    Song(s): 1. Crickets
    2. As Summer Into Autumn Slips
    3. Touch Me

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    One Bee and Revery

    Composer(s): Lori Laitman

    Song(s): 1. The Butterfly Upon
    2. Hope is a Strange Invention
    3. To Make a Prairie

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    Parting

    Composer(s): Ernest Gold

    Voice Type: High

    Buy via Music Sales Classical

    Poems of Love and Rain

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Voice Type: Medium

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    Simple Songs

    Composer(s): David Leisner

    Song(s): 1. Exultation
    2. Beauty
    3. Madness
    4. Letter
    5. Humility
    6. Simplicity

    Buy via Sheet Music Plus

    Six Poems by Emily Dickinson

    Composer(s): John Duke

    Voice Type: Soprano

    Buy via Sheet Music Plus

    Six Songs

    Composer(s): Ernst Bacon

    Song(s): 1. The Banks of the Yellow Sea
    2. Ancient Christmas Carol
    3. Omaha
    4. No Dew Upon the Grass
    5. A Clear Midnight
    6. World, Take Good Notice

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    Songs from Emily Dickinson

    Composer(s): Ernst Bacon

    Song(s): As If the Sea Should Part
    Let down the bars
    O friend
    The grass so little has to do
    A threadless way
    The postponeless Creature
    I'm Nobody
    My river runs to thee
    How still the bells
    The sun went down
    The grass so little has to do
    Savior
    She went as quiet as the dew
    Wild nights

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    Songs from Emily Dickinson: Nature, time and space Vol. 1

    Composer(s): Ernst Bacon

    Song(s): Is There Such a Thing as Day?
    Alabaster Wool (Snowfall)Simple days
    A spider
    On this wondrous sea
    A drop fell on the apple tree

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    Songs from Emily Dickinson: Nature, time and space Vol.2

    Composer(s): Ernst Bacon

    Song(s): Velvet people
    A wind like a bugle
    The morns are meeker
    Clover
    Nature, the gentlest mother

    Voice Type: High

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush

    Composer(s): Juliana Hall

    Song(s): To Eudocia C. Flynt
    To T.W. Higginson
    To Emily Fowler
    To Samuel Bowles the younger
    To Eugenia Hall
    To Susan Gilbert
    To Susan Gilbert II

    Buy via Hal Leonard

    Quiet Airs

    Composer(s): Ernst Bacon

    Song(s): 1. Twilight
    2. Gentle Greeting
    3. The Divine Ship
    4. Of Love
    5. Eden
    6. The Little Stone
    7. Fond Affection
    8. Stars
    9. The Heart
    10. Song of Snow-White Heads
    11. The Lamb
    12. To Musique, To Becalme His Fever

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    The White Diadem

    Composer(s): Leo Smit

    Song(s): 1. I reckon - when I count at all
    2. I dwell in Possibility
    3. The Martyr Poets - did not tell
    4. The Poets light but Lamps
    5. I would not paint - a picture
    6. To pile like Thunder to its close
    7. Me - come! My dazzled face

    Voice Type: Mezzo-Soprano, Soprano

    Buy via Theodore Presser Company

    Thirty-Four Songs on Poems by Emily Dickinson

    Composer(s): Arthur Farwell

    Find at your Local Library

    Thirty-Four Songs on Poems of Emily Dickinson, Vol. 1

    Composer(s): Arthur Farwell

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    Thirty-Four Songs on Poems by Emily Dickinson, Vol. 2

    Composer(s): Arthur Farwell

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    Three Dickinson Songs

    Composer(s): André Previn

    Song(s): 1. As Imperceptibly as grief
    2. Will there really be a morning?
    3. Good Morning, Midnight

    Voice Type: Soprano

    Buy via Hal Leonard

    Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson

    Composer(s): Aaron Copland

    Song(s): 1. Nature, the Gentlest Mother
    2. There Came a Wind Like a Bugle
    3. Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?
    4. The World Feels Dusty
    5. Heart, We Will Forget Him
    6. Dear March, Come In!
    7. Sleep is Supposed to Be
    8. When They Come Back
    9. I Felt a Funeral in My Brain
    10. I've Heard an Organ Talk Sometimes
    11. Going to Heaven!
    12. The Chariot

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    Two Settings of Emily Dickinson

    Composer(s): Richard Hundley

    Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

    Will There Really Be a Morning?

    Composer(s): Richard Hundley

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    Women's Voices

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Voice Type: High

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

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