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Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems

Part Four: Time and Eternity 94. How dare the robins sing

How dare the robins sing,

When men and women hear

Who since they went to their account

Have settled with the year! --

Paid all that life had earned

In one consummate bill,

And now, what life or death can do

Is immaterial.

Insulting is the sun

To him whose mortal light,

Beguiled of immortality,

Bequeaths him to the night.

In deference to him

Extinct be every hum,

Whose garden wrestles with the dew,

At daybreak overcome!