by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
Going to him! Happy Letter! Tell him
Language: English
Going to him! Happy Letter! Tell him - Tell him the page I didn't write; Tell him I only said the syntax, And left the verb and the pronoun out. Tell him just how the fingers hurried, Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow; And then you wished you had eyes in your pages, So you could see what moved them so. Tell him it wasn't a practised writer, You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled; You could hear the bodice tug, behind you, As if it held but the might of a child; You almost pitied it, you, it worked so. Tell him - No, you may quibble there, For it would split his heart to know it, And then you and I were silenter. Tell him night finished before we finished, And the old clock kept neighing "day!" And you got sleepy and begged to be ended - What could it hinder so, to say? Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious, But if he ask where you are hid Until to-morrow, happy letter! Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!
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Text Authorship:
- by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1891 [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Thomas Pasatieri (b. 1945), "Going to him! Happy Letter! Tell him", published 1976 [ soprano, clarinet, violin, violoncello, and piano ], from Far from love, no. 2 [sung text not yet checked]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 24
Word count: 181