My life had stood a loaded gun (143)
My life had stood a loaded gun
In corner, till a day
The owner passed — identified,
And carried me away.
And now we roam the sov’reign woods,
And now we hunt the doe —
And every time I speak for him
The mountains straight reply.
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the valley glow —
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through.
And when at night, our good day done,
I guard my master’s head,
’Tis better than the eider duck’s
Deep pillow to have shared.
To foe of his I’m deadly foe,
Non stir the second time
On whom I lay a yellow eye
Or an emphatic thumb.
Though I than he may longer live,
He longer must than I,
For I have but the art to kill —
Without the power to die.
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.