PAIN has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.
It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.
First print Life XIX
J poem 650 | Fr poem 760
Text compared with the fascicle and published as in the first print by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson; does not require adjustment, public domain worldwide, no rights reserved.
■→Poems, first print by Higginson and Todd, page 33;
■Notes for Emily Dickinson’s poetry;
Poems one-by-one print and fascicle comparison,
■Resource for Emily Dickinson’s poetry;
■Google Drive, manuscript fascicles.
Feel welcome to Poems by Emily Dickinson prepared for print by Teresa Pelka: thematic stanzas, notes on the Greek and Latin inspiration, the correlative with Webster 1828, and the Aristotelian motif, Things perpetual — these are not in time, but in eternity.
■PDF Free Access, Internet Archive
