Freeverse
Public-domain poetry, pleasantly readable
Non omnis moriar

I cannot live with you,

by Emily Dickinson · Explore poems

  1. I cannot live with you,
  2. It would be life,
  3. And life is over there
  4. Behind the shelf
  5.  
  6. The sexton keeps the key to,
  7. Putting up
  8. Our life, his porcelain,
  9. Like a cup
  10.  
  11. Discarded of the housewife,
  12. Quaint or broken;
  13. A newer Sevres pleases,
  14. Old ones crack.
  15.  
  16. I could not die with you,
  17. For one must wait
  18. To shut the other's gaze down, --
  19. You could not.
  20.  
  21. And I, could I stand by
  22. And see you freeze,
  23. Without my right of frost,
  24. Death's privilege?
  25.  
  26. Nor could I rise with you,
  27. Because your face
  28. Would put out Jesus',
  29. That new grace
  30.  
  31. Glow plain and foreign
  32. On my homesick eye,
  33. Except that you, than he
  34. Shone closer by.
  35.  
  36. They'd judge us -- how?
  37. For you served Heaven, you know,
  38. Or sought to;
  39. I could not,
  40.  
  41. Because you saturated sight,
  42. And I had no more eyes
  43. For sordid excellence
  44. As Paradise.
  45.  
  46. And were you lost, I would be,
  47. Though my name
  48. Rang loudest
  49. On the heavenly fame.
  50.  
  51. And were you saved,
  52. And I condemned to be
  53. Where you were not,
  54. That self were hell to me.
  55.  
  56. So we must keep apart,
  57. You there, I here,
  58. With just the door ajar
  59. That oceans are,
  60. And prayer,
  61. And that pale sustenance,
  62. Despair!

Tip: click a line to share it — or shift-click another line to share a range.