"Of Bronze - and Blaze -" by Emily Dickinson

Of Bronze - and Blaze -

The North - tonight -

So adequate - it forms -

So preconcerted with itself -

So distant - to alarms -

An Unconcern so sovereign

To Universe, or me -

Infects my simple spirit

With Taints of Majesty -

Till I take vaster attitudes -

And strut opon my stem -

Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,

For Arrogance of them -

My Splendors, are Menagerie -

But their Competeless Show

Will entertain the Centuries

When I, am long ago,

An Island in dishonored Grass -

Whom none but Daisies, know -

Source of the text – The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 142.

Bourguignomicon: Ars poetica borealis. This lyric posits the northern lights as an ideal poetic stance—arrogant & grand—unlike the poet’s little mixed bag.