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Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems

Part Two: Love 19. Of all the souls that stand create

CHOICE.


Of all the souls that stand create

I have elected one.

When sense from spirit files away,

And subterfuge is done;


When that which is and that which was

Apart, intrinsic, stand,

And this brief tragedy of flesh

Is shifted like a sand;


When figures show their royal front

And mists are carved away, --

Behold the atom I preferred

To all the lists of clay!