Name: I Cannot Live With You, Volume 3
Duration: P00H05M02S
Description: Poem by Emily Dickinson

I Cannot Live With You, Volume 3

from I Hear America Singing, Highlights from Volumes 1 - 5 by Barbara Hume and David Paul Mesler

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Poem by Emily Dickinson

lyrics

I cannot live with you
It would be life
And life is over there
Behind the shelf

The Sexton keeps the key to
Putting up
Our Life - his porcelain
Like a cup

Discarded of the Housewife
Quaint - or broke
A newer sevres pleases
Old ones crack

I could not die with you
For one must wait
To shut the other's gaze down
You could not

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

Nor could I rise with you
Because your face
Would put out Jesus'
That new grace

Glow plain and foreign
On my homesick eye
Except that you than He
Shone closer by

They'd judge us - how -
For you served heaven
You know, or sought to
I could not

Because you saturated sight
And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence
As paradise

And were you lost, I would be
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame

And were you saved
And I condemned to be
Where you were not
That self were hell to me

So we must meet apart
You there - I here
With just the door ajar
That oceans are and prayer
And that pale sustenance
Despair

credits

from I Hear America Singing, Highlights from Volumes 1 - 5, released January 1, 2008
David Paul Mesler, composer/pianist
Barbara Hume, vocalist

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about

Barbara Hume Seattle, Washington

Barbara Hume lives in the Seattle area where she has collaborated with composers for the past 20 years including David Paul Mesler, Bonnie Murphy, Paul Lewis and other northwest artists producing original music, set to a rich and varied canon of poetry. In these albums, the weaving of melody and imagery produce songs that unearth the raw senses that nurture the soul. ... more

barbarahumesings.com

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