There’s a Certain Slant of Light

Source

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

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.