Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Emily Dickinson

1274

The Bone that has no Marrow,
What Ultimate for that?
It is not fit for Table
For Beggar or for Cat.

A Bone has obligations—
A Being has the same—
A Marrowless Assembly
Is culpabler than shame.

But how shall finished Creatures
A function fresh obtain?
Old Nicodemus’ Phantom
Confronting us again!

Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson | Written c. 1873

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