}}}}} HAUNTED {{{{{
I live with Them — I see them all —
I cannot get away
For Visitor — or Sundown—
Death gives no Privacy
They are the ones — forestalling Mine —
And that — by Right that They
Presents a Claim invisible —
That staves off my decay.
I live with Them — I hear them all —
I stand alive —Today —
As witness to the Certainty
Of Immortality —
Taught Me — by Time — the lower Way —
Conviction — Every day —
That Life Alone — is Stopless —
Be Judgment — what it may!
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
__ adapted by FT __
Wonderful Emily Dickinson!
ReplyDeleteIf all goes as planned, I will teach an Emily Dickinson unit this school term, during which we are studying American Literature.
A part of my lesson plan is the showing of The Belle of Amherst. I bought the DVD years ago.
I have not had one word from her
ReplyDeleteFrankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."
I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love
"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck
"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them
"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song." - Sappho of Lesbos
...they say that Sappho was the first,
hunting down the proud Phaon,
to throw herself, in her goading desire, from the rock
that shines from afar. -Menander