Poems — First Series by Emily Dickinson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Mabel Loomis Todd

When I Was Small, a Woman Died

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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