dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Complete Poems  »  XIX

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

Part Three: Love

XIX

OF all the souls that stand create

I have elected one.

When sense from spirit files away,

And subterfuge is done;

When that which is and that which was

Apart, intrinsic, stand,

And this brief tragedy of flesh

Is shifted like a sand;

When figures show their royal front

And mists are carved away,—

Behold the atom I preferred

To all the lists of clay!