If I had no pencil

If I had no pencil,

Would it try mine -

Worn - now - and dull - sweet,

Writing much to thee.

If it had no word -

Would it make the Daisy,

Most as big as I was -

When it plucked me?

Emily Dickinson

Manuscript: About early 1861, in pencil, signed "Emily" and sent to American journalist and editor of  the Springfield Republican, Samuel Bowles, pinned around the stub of a pencil. In The Poems of Emily Dickinson, volume 3, 1998.

Black and white daguerrotype of Emily Dickinson ca. early 1847