The heart asks pleasure first

June 15, 2007 in Life, Poems | No comments

The heart asks pleasure firstThe heart asks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;

And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.

A grim little poem, no? Perhaps it’s dangerous to read this through the prism of current events; one can hear echoes of the torture and “right to die” debates in the “liberty to die”. Dickinson probably has more cosmic than temporal concerns here, with the capitalized Inquisitor representing a God who has a very different aspect than Emerson’s transcendental and immanent God (but may not be so different from Jonathan Edwards’ “God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider”).

This photo is available as a greeting card.