The Mushroom

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. 'T is 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 contemn, Had nature an Iscariot, That mushroom, -- it is him.

Dickinson's mushroom arrives overnight, leaves before you trust it, and is cast as nature's Judas.

Source: Emily Dickinson, "The Mushroom," Poems by Emily Dickinson, Second Series, ed. T. W. Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1891), Part III "Nature," no. XXV. This is the 1891 Higginson–Todd text only. Text: Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the US. Pairs with: Pentacles (fungi): Page of Pentacles, or Major Arcana: The Magician A note from 2026: The overnight arrival is accurate: the mushroom swells quickly from fungal threads that were already in the soil.

Public domain in the United States.