I showed her heights she never saw
Emily Dickinson
I SHOWED her heights she never saw— "Would'st climb?" I said, She said "Not so"— "With me?" I said, "With me?" I showed her secrets Morning's nest, The rope that Nights were put across— And now, "Would'st have me for a Guest?" She could not find her yes— And then, I brake my life, and Lo! A light for her, did solemn glow, The larger, as her face withdrew— And could she, further, "No?"
Of note
Dickinson wrote this poem two ways. In her own handmade booklet it begins "He showed me Hights I never saw," with a man doing the showing. In the copy she sent her sister-in-law Susan, she reversed the roles, so "I" shows "her." Susan's daughter published this version in 1914.
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TEXT PROVENANCE · First published 1914 in The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime · Text from The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime (1914), ed. Martha Dickinson Bianchi, via Wikisource.
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