Ett rum med utsikt

Love is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial to creation, and
The exponent to breath.

Emily Dickinson. Complete Poems. 1924. Part Three: Love.

I lost a world the other day.
Has anybody found?
You’ll know it by the row of stars
Around its forehead bound.

A rich man might not notice it;
Yet to my frugal eye
Of more esteem than ducats.
O, find it, sir, for me!

(Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems. 1924. Part Four: Time and Eternity)

I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.

I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.

(Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems. 1924. Part Three: Love. VII)

The soul unto itself
Is an imperial friend, -
Or the most agonizing spy
An enemy could send.

Secure against its own,
No treason it can fear;
Itself its sovereign, of itself
The soul should stand in awa.

(Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems. 1924. Part One: Life. XLI)

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

(Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems. 1924. Part One: Life. XIX)

The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

I’ve known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.

(Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems. 1924. Part One: Life. XIII)

Our share of night to bear,
Our share of morning,
Our blank in bliss to fill,
Our blank in scorning.

Here a star, and there a star,
Some lose their way.
Here a mist, and there a mist,
Afterwards-day!

(Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems. 1924. Part One: Life)