I have spent a good deal of today working with one of my students on a paper, which analyzes the poem “I Cannot Live with You.” Dickinson presents a systematic argument of why she cannot live a life with the object of her love. Most of us would go the other way, but not Dickinson who lived secluded in her home, writing poems, carrying on a lively correspondence, and wearing only white all of her later life.
I found this poem fascinating and thought I would share it this evening.
I cannot live with you, It would be life, And life is over there Behind the shelf
The sexton keeps the key to, Putting up Our life, his porcelain, Like a cup
Discarded of the housewife, Quaint or broken; A newer Sevres pleases, Old ones crack.
I could not die with you, For one must wait To shut the other’s gaze down, You could not.
And I, could I stand by And see you freeze, Without my right of frost, Death’s privilege?
Nor could I rise with you, Because your face Would put out Jesus’, That new grace
Glow plain and foreign On my homesick eye, Except that you, than he Shone closer by.
They’d judge us-how? For you served Heaven, you know, Or sought to; I could not,
Because you saturated sight, And I had no more eyes For sordid excellence As Paradise.
And were you lost, I would be, Though my name Rang loudest On the heavenly fame.
And were you saved, And I condemned to be Where you were not, That self were hell to me.
So we must keep apart, You there, I here, With just the door ajar That oceans are, And prayer, And that pale sustenance, Despair!
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