My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun

by Emily Dickinson

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 your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!

Is Heaven a physician? They say that He can heal; But medicine posthumous Is unavailable. Is Heaven an exchequer? They speak of what we owe; But that negotiation I’m not a party to.

I took my power in my hand And went against the world; ’Twas not so much as David had, But I was twice as bold. I aimed my pebble, but myself Was all the one that fell. Was it Goliath was too large, Or only I too small?

I felt a cleavage in my mind As if my brain had split; I tried to match it, seam by seam, But could not make them fit. The thought behind I strove to join Unto the thought before, But sequence ravelled out of reach Like balls upon a floor.

Admonished by her buckled lips Let every babbler be. The only secret people keep Is Immortality.

Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality.

Bereaved of all, I went abroad, No less bereaved to be Upon a new peninsula, — The grave preceded me, Obtained my lodgings ere myself, And when I sought my bed, The grave it was, reposed upon The pillow for my head. I waked, to find it first awake, I rose, — it followed me; I tried to drop it in the crowd, To lose it in the sea, In cups of artificial drowse To sleep its shape away, — The grave was finished, but the spade Remained in memory.

I felt a funeral in my brain, And mourners, to and fro, Kept treading, treading, till it seemed That sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, A service like a drum Kept beating, beating, till I thought My mind was going numb. And then I heard them lift a box, And creak across my soul With those same boots of lead, again, Then space began to toll As all the heavens were a bell, And Being but an ear, And I and silence some strange race, Wrecked, solitary, here.

My life had stood a loaded gun In corners, till a day The owner passed — identified, And carried me away.

Though I than he may longer live, He longer must than I, For I have but the art to kill — Without the power to die.

A toad can die of light! Deaths is the common right Of toads and men, — Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat’s supremacy Is large as thine.