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 broke. 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 meet apart, You there, I here, With just the door ajar That oceans are, and prayer, And that white sustenance, Despair.
Two Songs from Emily Dickinson
Song Cycle by Lita Grier
1.  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Text Authorship:
- by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title
See other settings of this text.
Researcher for this page: Barbara Miller2.  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
I taste a liquor never brewed, From tankards scooped in pearl; Not all the vats upon the Rhine Yield such an alcohol! Inebriate of air am I, And debauchee of dew, Reeling, through endless summer days, From inns of molten blue. When landlords turn the drunken bee Out of the foxglove's door, When butterflies renounce their drams, I shall but drink the more! Till seraphs swing their snowy hats, And saints to windows run, To see the little tippler Leaning against the sun!
Text Authorship:
- by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1890
See other settings of this text.
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Total word count: 287