I never hear that one is dead (1325)
I never hear that one is dead
Without the chance of Life
Afresh annihilating me
That mightiest Belief,
Too mighty for the Daily mind
That tilling it’s abyss,
Had Madness, had it once or, Twice
The yawning Consciousness,
Beliefs are Bandaged, like the Tongue
When Terror were it told
In any Tone commensurate
Would strike us instant Dead -
I do not know the man so bold
He dare in lonely Place
That awful stranger - Consciousness
Deliberately face -
Notes:
The Poetry Foundation often receives questions about Emily Dickinson's poems. Read a note from the digital archive editor about Dickinson's "errors."
Copyright Credit: The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin, Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University of Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955, by the Presiednt and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1979, 1983, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L. Hampson.
Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998)