It struck me every day
the lightning was as new
as if the cloud that instant slit
and let the fire through.
It burned me in the night,
it blistered in my dream;
it sickened fresh upon my sight
with every morning's beam.
I thought that storm was brief,--
the maddest, quickest by;
but Nature lost the date of this
and left it in the sky.
--Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), poem 132
