‘Tis so appalling – it exhilarates –
So over Horror, it half Captivates –
The Soul stares after it, secure –
A Sepulchre, fears frost, no more –
To scan a Ghost, is faint –
But grappling, conquers it –
How easy, Torment, now –
Suspense kept sawing so –
The Truth, is Bald, and Cold –
But that will hold –
If any are not sure –
We show them – prayer –
But we, who know,
Stop hoping, now –
Looking at Death, is Dying –
Just let go the Breath –
And not the pillow at your Cheek
So Slumbereth –
Others, Can wrestle –
Yours, is done –
And so of Woe, bleak dreaded – come,
It sets the Fright at liberty –
And Terror's free –
Gay, Ghastly, Holiday![3]
Works Referenced
Cooley, Thomas. The Ivory Leg in the Ebony Cabinet: Madness, Race, and Gender in Victorian America. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.
Dickinson, Emily. “‘Tis so appalling – it exhilarates –.” Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them. Ed. Cristanne Miller. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. 179.
Nigro, August. The Diagonal Line: Separation and Reparation in American Literature. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1984.
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[1] Nigro, 128.
[2] Cooley, 209.
[3] Dickinson, 179.
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