Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete. Эмили Дикинсон

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!

XIIIRENUNCIATION

      There came a day at summer's full

      Entirely for me;

      I thought that such were for the saints,

      Where revelations be.

      The sun, as common, went abroad,

      The flowers, accustomed, blew,

      As if no soul the solstice passed

      That maketh all things new.

      The time was scarce profaned by speech;

      The symbol of a word

      Was needless, as at sacrament

      The wardrobe of our Lord.

      Each was to each the sealed church,

      Permitted to commune this time,

      Lest we too awkward show

      At supper of the Lamb.

      The hours slid fast, as hours will,

      Clutched tight by greedy hands;

      So faces on two decks look back,

      Bound to opposing lands.

      And so, when all the time had failed,

      Without external sound,

      Each bound the other's crucifix,

      We gave no other bond.

      Sufficient troth that we shall rise —

      Deposed, at length, the grave —

      To that new marriage, justified

      Through Calvaries of Love!

XIVLOVE'S BAPTISM

      I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs;

      The name they dropped upon my face

      With water, in the country church,

      Is finished using now,

      And they can put it with my dolls,

      My childhood, and the string of spools

      I've finished threading too.

      Baptized before without the choice,

      But this time consciously, of grace

      Unto supremest name,

      Called to my full, the crescent dropped,

      Existence's whole arc filled up

      With one small diadem.

      My second rank, too small the first,

      Crowned, crowing on my father's breast,

      A half unconscious queen;

      But this time, adequate, erect,

      With will to choose or to reject.

      And I choose – just a throne.

XVRESURRECTION

      'T was a long parting, but the time

      For interview had come;

      Before the judgment-seat of God,

      The last and second time

      These fleshless lovers met,

      A heaven in a gaze,

      A heaven of heavens, the privilege

      Of one another's eyes.

      No lifetime set on them,

      Apparelled as the new

      Unborn, except they had beheld,

      Born everlasting now.

      Was bridal e'er like this?

      A paradise, the host,

      And cherubim and seraphim

      The most familiar guest.

XVIAPOCALYPSE

      I'm wife; I've finished that,

      That other state;

      I'm Czar, I'm woman now:

      It's safer so.

      How odd the girl's life looks

      Behind this soft eclipse!

      I think that earth seems so

      To those in heaven now.

      This being comfort, then

      That other kind was pain;

      But why compare?

      I'm wife! stop there!

XVIITHE WIFE

      She rose to his requirement, dropped

      The playthings of her life

      To take the honorable work

      Of woman and of wife.

      If aught she missed in her new day

      Of amplitude, or awe,

      Or first prospective, or the gold

      In using wore away,

      It lay unmentioned, as the sea

      Develops pearl and weed,

      But only to himself is known

      The fathoms they abide.

XVIIIAPOTHEOSIS

      Come slowly, Eden!

      Lips unused to thee,

      Bashful, sip thy jasmines,

      As