Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Emily Dickinson

1759

Which misses most,
The hand that tends,
Or heart so gently borne,
’Tis twice as heavy as it was
Because the hand is gone?

Which blesses most,
The lip that can,
Or that that went to sleep

With “if I could” endeavoring
Without the strength to shape?

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

What are tags?
Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

« Previous