In Vain - EMILY DICKINSON

In Vain
I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf
The sexton keeps the key to,
Putting up
Our life, his porcelain,
Like a cup
Discarded of the housewife,
Quaint or broken;
A newer Sevres pleases,
Old ones crack.
I could not die with you,
For one must wait
To shut the other's gaze down,
You could not.
And I, could I stand by
And see you freeze,
Without my right of frost,
Death's privilege?
Nor could I rise with you,
Because your face
Would put out Jesus',
That new grace
Glow plain and foreign
On my homesick eye,
Except that you, than he
Shone closer by.
They'd judge us-how?
For you served Heaven,
you know,
Or sought to;
I could not,
Because you saturated sight,
And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise.
And were you lost,
I would be,
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame.
And were you saved,
And I condemned to be
Where you were not,
That self were hell to me.
So we must keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale sustenance,
Despair!


Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in the quiet community of Amherst, Massachusetts, nurtured in a quiet, reserved family headed by their authoritative father Edward. Throughout Emily's life, her mother was not "emotionally accessible," the absence of which might have caused some of Emily's eccentricity. Being rooted in the puritanical Massachusetts of the 1800's, the Dickinson children were raised in the Christian tradition, and they were expected to take up their father's religious beliefs and values without argument. Later in life, Emily would come to challenge these conventional religious viewpoints of her father and the church, and the challenges she met with would later contribute to the strength of her poetry.Emily seldom left her father's house. In Emily's entire life, she took one trip to Philadelphia (due to eye problems), one to Washington, and a few trips to Boston. Other than those occasional ventures, Emily had no extended exposure to the world outside her home town. During this time, her early twenties, Emily began to write poetry seriously. Fortunately, during those rare journeys Emily met two very influential men that would be sources of inspiration and guidance: Charles Wadsworth and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. There were other less influential individuals that affected Emily, such as Samuel Bowles and J.G. Holland, but the impact that Wadsworth and Higginson had on Dickinson was monumental. The Reverend Charles Wadsworth, age 41, had a powerful effect on Emily's life and her poetry. On her trip to Philadelphia, Emily met Wadsworth, a clergyman, who was to become her "dearest earthly friend". A romantic figure, Wadsworth was an outlet for Emily, because his orthodox Calvinism acted as a beneficial catalyst to her theoretical inferences. Wadsworth, like Dickinson, was a solitary, romantic person that Emily could confide in when writing her poetry. He had the same poise in the pulpit that Emily had in her poetry. Wadsworth's religious beliefs and presumptions also gave Emily a sharp, and often welcome, contrast to the transcendentalist writings and easy assumptions of Emerson. Most importantly, it is widely believed that Emily had a great love for this Reverend from Philadelphia even though he was married. Many of Dickinson's critics believe that Wadsworth was the focal point of Emily's love poems.