XX.
I have no life but this,
To lead it here;
Behind this door, pressing up
To listen with my ear.
Nor urgent chores,
Nor appointments new,
Except to this extent:
(Whispering to you.)
—
Dickinson’s final, slightly more romantic version.
XX.
I have no life but this,
To lead it here;
Behind this door, pressing up
To listen with my ear.
Nor urgent chores,
Nor appointments new,
Except to this extent:
(Whispering to you.)
—
Dickinson’s final, slightly more romantic version.
XXI.
He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Only that his frame was rust.
He was a car.
A dead car.
XIV.
Some things that fly there be,—
Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:
Bats, flies, gnats, paper aeroplanes, fleas.
Some things that stay there be,—
Grief, hills, eternity:
Rocks, pennies on the ground, corpses and houses, usually.
There are, that resting, rise.
The sky:
I mean the clouds. Meant to say the clouds.
—
It takes me longer than you are tall to explain…
Care to join?
I.
Adventure most unto itself
The soul condemned to be;
Attended by a Single Hound—
Carlo, my doggy.
—
Original as published in an early addition, but actually part of a longer poem.