From the daguerreotype taken at Mount Holyoke, December 1846 or early 1847. The only authenticated portrait of Emily Dickinson later than childhood, the original is held by the Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College

On this day – December 10, 1830 – poet Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. From biography.com:

Emily Dickinson, regarded as one of America’s  greatest poets, is also well known for her unusual life of self imposed social seclusion.  Living a life of simplicity and seclusion, she yet wrote poetry of great power;  questioning the nature of immortality and death, with at times an almost mantric  quality. Her different lifestyle  created an aura; often romanticised, and  frequently a source of interest and speculation. But ultimately Emily Dickinson  is remembered for her unique poetry. Within short, compact phrases she  expressed far-reaching ideas; amidst paradox and uncertainty her poetry has an  undeniable capacity to move and provoke.

Read more about Emily Dickinson here and here.

“I heard a Fly Buzz When I died”  by Emily Dickinson:

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

 The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

  I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, and then
There interposed a fly,

  With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.