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Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems

Part Four: Time and Eternity 33. When I was small, a woman died

ALONG THE POTOMAC.


When I was small, a woman died.

To-day her only boy

Went up from the Potomac,

His face all victory,


To look at her; how slowly

The seasons must have turned

Till bullets clipt an angle,

And he passed quickly round!


If pride shall be in Paradise

I never can decide;

Of their imperial conduct,

No person testified.


But proud in apparition,

That woman and her boy

Pass back and forth before my brain,

As ever in the sky.

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