Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

PAIN has an element of blank;

It cannot recollect

When it began, or if there were

A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,

Its infinite realms contain

Its past, enlightened to perceive

New periods of pain

That Love is all there is,

Is all we know of Love.

They’d judge us—how?

For you served Heaven, you know,

Or sought to;

I could not,

Because you saturated sight,

And I had no more eyes

For sordid excellence

As Paradise.