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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!

About the headline (FAQ)

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

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This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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