A Drop Fell on the Apple Tree

by EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)

A drop fell on the apple tree
Another on the roof;
A half a dozen kissed the eaves,
And made the gables laugh.

A few went out to help the brook,
That went to help the sea.
Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,
What necklaces could be!

The dust replaced in hoisted roads
The birds jocoser sung;
The sunshine threw his hat away,
The orchards spangles hung.

The breezes brought dejected
And bathed them in the glee;
The East put out a single flag,
And signed the fete away.

“Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine, Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!” Dickinson said in her earliest known poem, dated March 4, 1850, published in the Springfield Daily Republican in 1852.

Emily Dickinson Contemporaries
Christina Rossetti
Phoebe Cary
Lewis Carroll
William Allingham