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 34463-34926; checksum 93bcd7d489b5105f83db82c8a153b7ebf614608984bb78bca17c7a143a31b7a2.


# There’s a Certain Slant of Light

XXXI.

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'T is the seal, despair, --
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

IV. TIME AND ETERNITY.