- 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
