Emily Dickinson speaks for me:
DEPARTED to the judgment,
A mighty afternoon;
Great clouds like ushers leaning,
Creation looking on.
The flesh surrendered, cancelled, 5
The bodiless begun;
Two worlds, like audiences, disperse
And leave the soul alone.
----------------------------
LOOK back on time with kindly eyes,
He doubtless did his best;
How softly sinks his trembling sun
In human nature’s west!
------------------------------
I MEASURE every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
I wonder if they bore it long, 5
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try, 10
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
I wonder if when years have piled—
Some thousands—on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse 15
Could give them any pause;
Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love. 20
The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,—
Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.
There ’s grief of want, and grief of cold,— 25
A sort they call “despair”;
There ’s banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.
And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me 30
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,
To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those that stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume 35
That some are like my own.
-----------------------------------------
YOU left me, sweet, two legacies,—
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;
You left me boundaries of pain 5
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me
DEPARTED to the judgment,
A mighty afternoon;
Great clouds like ushers leaning,
Creation looking on.
The flesh surrendered, cancelled, 5
The bodiless begun;
Two worlds, like audiences, disperse
And leave the soul alone.
----------------------------
LOOK back on time with kindly eyes,
He doubtless did his best;
How softly sinks his trembling sun
In human nature’s west!
------------------------------
I MEASURE every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
I wonder if they bore it long, 5
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try, 10
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
I wonder if when years have piled—
Some thousands—on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse 15
Could give them any pause;
Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love. 20
The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,—
Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.
There ’s grief of want, and grief of cold,— 25
A sort they call “despair”;
There ’s banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.
And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me 30
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,
To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those that stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume 35
That some are like my own.
-----------------------------------------
YOU left me, sweet, two legacies,—
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;
You left me boundaries of pain 5
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me