My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun [SSC8 Poetry Challenge]

Original poem "My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun" by Emily Dickinson, around 1863 ========================== My life had stood... loaded gun In corners, till a day The owner passed, identified And carried me away And now we roam in sovereign woods And now we hunt the doe And every time I speak for him The mountains straight reply And do I smile, such cordial light Upon the valley glow It is as a Vesuvian face That lets its pleasure show And when at night, our good day done I guard my master’s head This better than the eider duck’s Deep pillow to have shared To foe of his, I’m deadly foe None stir the second time On whom I lay a yellow eye Or an emphatic thumb Though I than he may longer live He longer must than I For I have but the power to kill Without the power to die