Poem by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The Letter

"GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him --
Tell him the page I didn't write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried,
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.

"Tell him it wasn't a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him -- No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it,
And then you and I were silenter.

"Tell him night finished before we finished,
And the old clock kept neighing 'day!'
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended --
What could it hinder so, to say?
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
But if he ask where you are hid
Until to-morrow, -- happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!"

1. Superiority to Fate
2. Hope (Hope is a subtle glutton)
3. The Forgotten Grave
4. Forbidden Fruit. I
5. I Think Just How My Shape Will Rise

Thomas Aldrich The Letter ("I held his letter in my hand")

Print

1604 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version