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Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems

Part Four: Time and Eternity 135. A clock stopped - not the mantel's

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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