Poem by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

* * *

Because that you are going
And never coming back
And I, however absolute,
May overlook your Track —

Because that Death is final,
However first it be,
This instant be suspended
Above Mortality —

Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate

Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you, who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live —

The “Life that is” will then have been
A thing I never knew —
As Paradise fictitious
Until the Realm of you —

The “Life that is to be,” to me,
A Residence too plain
Unless in my Redeemer’s Face
I recognize your own —

Of Immortality who doubts
He may exchange with me
Curtailed by your obscuring Face
Of everything but He —

Of Heaven and Hell I also yield
The Right to reprehend
To whoso would commute this Face
For his less priceless Friend.

If “God is Love” as he admits
We think that me must be
Because he is a “jealous God”
He tells us certainly

If “All is possible with” him
As he besides concedes
He will refund us finally
Our confiscated Gods —

1. A Service of Song
2. Love’s Baptism
3. Psalm of the Day
4. The Sea of Sunset
5. To Fight Aloud Is Very Brave

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