J640

I cannot live with You -It would be Life -And Life is over there -Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to -Putting upOur Life - His Porcelain -Like a Cup -

Discarded of the Housewife -Quaint - or Broke -A newer Sevres pleases -Old Ones crack -

I could not die - with You -For One must waitTo shut the Other’s Gaze down -You - could not -

And I - Could I stand byAnd see You - freeze -Without my Right of Frost -Death’s privilege?

Nor could I rise - with You -Because Your FaceWould put out Jesus’ -That New Grace

Glow plain - and foreignOn my homesick Eye -Except that You than HeShone 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 EyesFor sordid excellenceAs Paradise

And were You lost, I would be -Though My NameRang loudestOn the Heavenly fame -

And were You - saved -And I - condemned to beWhere You were not -That self - were Hell to Me -

So We must meet apart -You there - I - here -With just the Door ajarThat Oceans are - and Prayer -And that White Sustenance -Despair -

c. 1862                    1890

See note to J322. Notice the pride Dickinson takes in the heresy of placing her beloved before Christ (stanzas 6 and 7) and her implicit identification with Milton’s Satan in stanza 11.