I never felt at home below (43)
I never felt at home below,
And in the handsome skies
I shall not feel at home
I know,
I don’t like Paradise.
Because it’s Sunday all the time
And recess never comes,
And Eden’ll be so lonesome
Bright Wednesday afternoons.
If God could make a visit,
Or ever took a nap —
So not to see us — but they say
Himself a telescope
Perennial beholds us, —
Myself would run away
From Him and Holy Ghost and All —
But — there’s the Judgment Day!
From The Further Poems of Emily Dickinson (Little, Brown, and Company, 1929), edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson. This poem is in the public domain.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. While she was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. She died in Amherst in 1886, and the first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890.