Nobody

“I'm nobody! Who are you?


Are you nobody, too?


Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!


They'd banish us, you know!


How dreary to be somebody!


How public like a frog


To tell one's name the livelong day


To an admiring bog! ”


The poem, by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), has been used many times in confidence-building exercises among young people in the US. Young people like to belong; there are very few things worse than the sense of being rejected and excluded. Hence, the desire to be popular.


Emily Dickinson, a reclusive (隱遁的) domestic individual for most of her life by most accounts, accepts her anonymity with serenity (平靜). In her view, to be "somebody" is like a frog croaking (呱呱叫) in the swamp (沼澤), and to what purpose? An admiring bog (沼澤) is still a bog. It is so pointless, so dreary (令人沮喪).


It seems much more reassuring when you have one or two friends who truly understand you. In the poem, the poet has found someone just like that. Like her, this person is nobody. The two have formed a pack, and they are unto a world by themselves.