Prolific Poet

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on this day in 1830.

Dickinson is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets in American literature, though only a few of her 1,700 poems were published during her lifetime. Fringed Gentian, a watercolor by Mary Vaux Walcott, complements Dickinson's poem.

God Made a Little Gentian

God made a little gentian;
It tried to be a rose
And failed, and all the summer laughed.
But just before the snows
There came a purple creature
That ravished all the hill;
And summer hid her forehead,
And mockery was still.
The frosts were her condition;
The Tyrian would not come
Until the North evoked it.
"Creator! shall I bloom?"

Pictured: Mary Vaux Walcott, 1860 USA–1940 Canada, Fringed Gentian (Gentiana crinita), 1905, watercolor on paper, 9 7/8 x 7 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist.