"I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to" is a short poem by the American poet Emily Dickinson. Published posthumously, it was written during the early 1860s. Like much of Dickinson's work, it is brief and deceptively simple in form and diction, infused with imagery of the natural world. The poem concerns a speaker's efforts to find a suitable gift for a friend (the poem's addressee). Over the course of the work's three stanzas, this speaker rejects a series of conventionally desirable objects, ultimately arguing that a wildflower is the best possible gift for the friend.
The work consists of three quatrains, each with an ABCB rhyme scheme. Its meter is irregular, with the poem alternating between longer lines of 4-5 poetic feet and shorter lines of 3-4 poetic feet. This irregularity creates a sense of intimacy and informality. Typically for Dickinson's work, this poem contains a great deal of caesura, which is used to cultivate the impression of immersion in a speaker's thought processes.
Though the work's immediate focus is very narrow, it can be read as subtly critiquing America's mid-nineteenth-century transition to modern consumer culture as a result of industrialization, inclusion in global trade networks, and colonial expansion. The speaker's praise for local nature over luxury imports serves as an interrogation of consumerist attitudes toward the material world.
