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Emily Dickinson · Poems

Poem 440 of 446 · Third Series: Time and Eternity

Poem 53

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A clock stopped -- not the mantel's; Geneva's farthest skill Can't put the puppet bowing That just now dangled still.

An awe came on the trinket! The figures hunched with pain, Then quivered out of decimals Into degreeless noon.

It will not stir for doctors, This pendulum of snow; The shopman importunes it, While cool, concernless No

Nods from the gilded pointers, Nods from the seconds slim, Decades of arrogance between The dial life and him.

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