New England Diary

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Don’t believe it

Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest heavens, from Gustave Doré's illustrations to the Divine Comedy.


That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet.
Believing what we don’t believe
Does not exhilarate.

That if it be, it be at best
An ablative estate —
This instigates an appetite
Precisely opposite.

— (Untitled) by Emily Dickinson (1830- 1886), of Amherst, Mass.