Explore "The Letter" by Emily Dickinson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him -- / Tell him the page I didn't write; / Tell him I only said the syntax, / And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried, / Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow; / And then you wished you had eyes in your pages, / So you could see what moved them so.
"Tell him it wasn't a practised writer, / You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled; / You could hear the bodice tug, behind you, / As if it held but the might of a child; / You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him -- No, you may quibble there, / For it would split his heart to know it, / And then you and I were silenter.
"Tell him night finished before we finished, / And the old clock kept neighing 'day! ' / And you got sleepy and begged to be ended -- / What could it hinder so, to say?
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious, / But if he ask where you are hid / Until to-morrow, -- happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head! "