E-Text

Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems

Part Four: Time and Eternity 68. Her final summer was it

AT LENGTH.


Her final summer was it,

And yet we guessed it not;

If tenderer industriousness

Pervaded her, we thought


A further force of life

Developed from within, --

When Death lit all the shortness up,

And made the hurry plain.


We wondered at our blindness, --

When nothing was to see

But her Carrara guide-post, --

At our stupidity,


When, duller than our dulness,

The busy darling lay,

So busy was she, finishing,

So leisurely were we!