Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium

Long before Dickinson started writing poems, she took on the art of botany. As a young girl she enjoyed gathering, growing, classifying, and pressing of flowers. Each page is patiently assembled and beautifully composed just like what her poetry would become. The herbarium is located in the Emily Dickinson Room at Harvard’s Houghton Rare Book Library. Unfortunately, it is so fragile that no one is allowed to view it, but thanks to Harvard we can now view all these beautiful digitized pages online or you can purchase out of print version for a hefty price.

With Flowers
South winds jostle them,
Bumblebees come,
Hover, hesitate,
Drink, and are gone.

Butterflies pause
On their passage Cashmere;
I, softly plucking,
Present them here !

– Emily Dickinson

 

 

 

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