I cannot live with you by Emily Dickinson

This is poem is one of Emily Dickson's great love poems, close in form to the poetic argument of a classic Shakespearean sonnet. The poem shares the logical sensibility of the metaphysical poets whom she admired, advancing her thoughts about her lover, slowly, from the first declaration to the inevitable devastating conclusion.

However, unlike most sonnet arguments or “carpe diem” poems, this poem seems designed to argue against love. The poem can be broken down into five parts. The first explains why she cannot live with the object of her love, the second why she cannot die with him, the third why she cannot rise with him, the fourth why she cannot fall with him, and the final utterance of impossibility.

The poem begins with a sense of impossibility:

I cannot live with you,It would be life,And life is over thereBehind the shelf

The sexton keeps the key to,Putting upOur life, his porcelain,Like a cup

Discarded of the housewife,Quaint or broken;A newer Sevres pleases,Old ones crack.

I could not die with you,For one must waitTo shut the other's gaze down,You could not.

And I, could I stand byAnd see you freeze,Without my right of frost,Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise with you,Because your faceWould put out Jesus'.That new grace

Glow plain and foreignOn my homesick eye,Except that you, than heShone closer by.