Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924. |
Part Three: Love
XII
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| I CANNOT live with you, | |
| It would be life, | |
| And life is over there | |
| Behind the shelf | |
| |
| The sexton keeps the key to, | 5 |
| Putting up | |
| Our life, his porcelain, | |
| Like a cup | |
| |
| Discarded of the housewife, | |
| Quaint or broken; | 10 |
| A newer Sèvres pleases, | |
| Old ones crack. | |
| |
| I could not die with you, | |
| For one must wait | |
| To shut the other’s gaze down,— | 15 |
| You could not. | |
| |
| And I, could I stand by | |
| And see you freeze, | |
| Without my right of frost, | |
| Death’s privilege? | 20 |
| |
| Nor could I rise with you, | |
| Because your face | |
| Would put out Jesus’, | |
| That new grace | |
| |
| Glow plain and foreign | 25 |
| On my homesick eye, | |
| Except that you, than he | |
| Shone closer by. | |
| |
| They ’d judge us—how? | |
| For you served Heaven, you know, | 30 |
| Or sought to; | |
| I could not, | |
| |
| Because you saturated sight, | |
| And I had no more eyes | |
| For sordid excellence | 35 |
| As Paradise. | |
| |
| And were you lost, I would be, | |
| Though my name | |
| Rang loudest | |
| On the heavenly fame. | 40 |
| |
| And were you saved, | |
| And I condemned to be | |
| Where you were not, | |
| That self were hell to me. | |
| |
| So we must keep apart, | 45 |
| You there, I here, | |
| With just the door ajar | |
| That oceans are, | |
| And prayer, | |
| And that pale sustenance, | 50 |
| Despair! | |
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