It was not death, for I stood up
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The famous hermit from Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) published only eight poems during her lifetime. Today her nearly 2,000
. . . MORE »By Emily Dickinson
It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down.
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues for noon.
It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.
And yet it tasted like them all,
The figures I have seen
Set orderly for burial
Reminded me of mine,
As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame
And could not breathe without a key,
And 'twas like midnight, some,
When everything that ticked has stopped
And space stares all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground;
But most like chaos, stopless, cool,
Without a chance, or spar,
Or even a report of land
To justify despair.
Dickinson poems are electronically reproduced courtesy of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON: VARIORUM EDITION, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University of Press, Copyright © 1988 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.