Tiny World

The mushroom is the elf of plants,

At evening it is not;

At morning in a truffled hut

It stops upon a spot

 

As if it tarried always;

And yet its whole career

Is shorter than a snake's delay,

And fleeter than a tare.

 

'Tis vegetation's juggler,

The germ of alibi;

Doth like a bubble antedate,

And like a bubble hie.

 

I feel as if the grass were pleased

To have it intermit;

The surreptitious scion

Of summer's circumspect.

 

Had nature any outcast face,

Could she a son condemn,

Had nature an Iscariot,

That mushroom,--it is him.

Emily Dickinson

Manchester, NJ