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"Emily Dickinson, hot lovely spinster poet of the Berkshires and creator of short love poems"

Emily Dickinson, born 1830, died 1886

It's Such a Little Thing

It's such a little thing to weep,
So short a thing to sigh;
And yet by trades the size of these
We men and women die!

To lose Thee
by Emily Dickinson

To lose thee, sweeter than to gain
All other hearts I knew.
Tis true the drought is destitute
But, then, I had the dew!

The Caspian has its realms of sand,
Its other realm of sea.
Without this sterile perquisite
No Caspian could be.

I CANNOT live with you

I CANNOT live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf

The sexton keeps the key to,
Putting up
Our life, his porcelain,
Like a cup

Discarded of the housewife,
Quaint or broken;
A newer S�vres pleases,
Old ones crack.

I could not die with you,
For one must wait
To shut the other�s gaze down,�
You could not.

And I, could I stand by
And see you freeze,
Without my right of frost,
Death�s privilege?

Nor could I rise with you,
Because your face
Would put out Jesus�,
That new grace

Glow plain and foreign
On my homesick eye,
Except that you, than he
Shone closer by.

They �d judge us�how?
For you served Heaven, you know,
Or sought to;
I could not,

Because you saturated sight,
And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise.

And were you lost, I would be,
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame.

And were you saved,
And I condemned to be
Where you were not,
That self were hell to me.

So we must keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale sustenance,
Despair!

Where do you want to go now?!

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