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This was a poet

This was a Poet –
It is That
Distills amazing sense
From Ordinary Meanings –

And Attar so immense
From the familiar species
That perished by the Door –
We wonder it was not
Ourselves
Arrested it – before –

Of Pictures, the Discloser –
The Poet – it is He –
Entitles Us – by Contrast –
To ceaseless Poverty –

Of Portion – so unconscious –
The Robbing – could not harm –
Himself – to Him – a Fortune –
Exterior – to Time –

Emily Dickinson, Fr446, The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, ed. R.W. Franklin (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 206.

Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University

Original poem written in ink on faintly lined paper, The hand is slanted and fine.