Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.

Part Three: Love

XXXVIII

ONE blessing had I, than the rest

So larger to my eyes

That I stopped gauging, satisfied,

For this enchanted size.

It was the limit of my dream,

The focus of my prayer,—

A perfect, paralyzing bliss

Contented as despair.

I knew no more of want or cold,

Phantasms both become,

For this new value in the soul,

Supremest earthly sum.

The heaven below the heaven above

Obscured with ruddier hue.

Life’s latitude leant over-full;

The judgment perished, too.

Why joys so scantily disburse,

Why Paradise defer,

Why floods are served to us in bowls,—

I speculate no more.