Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924. |
Part One: Life
CXVI
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| I MEASURE every grief I meet | |
| With analytic eyes; | |
| I wonder if it weighs like mine, | |
| Or has an easier size. | |
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| 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 |
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| 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. | |
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