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Emily Dickinson · Poems

Poem 267 of 446 · Second Series: Time and Eternity

At Length

— ✻ —

Her final summer was it,
And yet we guessed it not;
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded her, we thought

A further force of life
Developed from within, --
When Death lit all the shortness up,
And made the hurry plain.

We wondered at our blindness, --
When nothing was to see
But her Carrara guide-post, --
At our stupidity,

When, duller than our dullness,
The busy darling lay,
So busy was she, finishing,
So leisurely were we!

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