Collected Poems

by Emily Dickinson

The healed Heart shows its shallow scar With confidential moan, Not mended by Mortality Are fabrics truly torn. To go its convalescent way So shameless is to see, More genuine were Perfidy Than such Fidelity.

To pile like Thunder to its close, Then crumble grand away, While everything created hid — This would be Poetry: Or Love, — the two coeval came — We both and neither prove, Experience either, and consume — For none see God and live.

The Stars are old, that stood for me — The West a little worn, Yet newer glows the only Gold I ever cared to earn — Presuming on that lone result Her infinite disdain, But vanquished her with my defeat, ’T was Victory was slain.

All circumstances are the frame In which His Face is set, All Latitudes exist for His Sufficient continent. The light His Action and the dark The Leisure of His Will, In Him Existence serve, or set A force illegible.

I did not reach thee, But my feet slip nearer every day; Three Rivers and a Hill to cross, One Desert and a Sea — I shall not count the journey one When I am telling thee. Two deserts — but the year is cold So that will help the sand — One desert crossed, the second one Will feel as cool as land. Sahara is too little price To pay for thy Right hand! The sea comes last. Step merry, feet! So short have we to go To play together we are prone, But we must labor now, The last shall be the lightest load That we have had to draw. The Sun goes crooked — that is night — Before he makes the bend We must have passed the middle sea, Almost we wish the end Were further off — too great it seems So near the Whole to stand. We step like plush, we stand like snow — The waters murmur now, Three rivers and the hill are passed, Two deserts and the sea! Now Death usurps my premium And gets the look at Thee.