Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #12242, Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete
Source URL: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12242
Public domain basis: Complete text of the three posthumous series edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson (1890, 1891, 1896), with their editorial titles and regularized punctuation. Public domain.
Coverage: Complete individual poem extracted from parent edition poems-of-emily-dickinson at bytes 9219-9440; checksum ccf3f1bb3fa82b796cbbee390e894c22e1a569afdc703d1a7c1ed0eca9f0d28c.


# The Heart Asks Pleasure First

IX.

The heart asks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;

And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.