Lyric Poem · Peace
A Pit—but Heaven over it
A Pit — but Heaven over it —
And Heaven beside, and Heaven abroad,
And yet a Pit —
With Heaven over it.
To stir would be to slip —
To look would be to drop —
To dream — to sap the Prop
That holds my chances up.
Ah! Pit! With Heaven over it!
The depth is all my thought —
I dare not ask my feet —
'Twould start us where we sit
So straight you'd scarce suspect
It was a Pit — with fathoms under it —
Its Circuit just the same.
Seed — summer — tomb —
Whose Doom to whom?
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“A Pit—but Heaven over it” by Emily Dickinson — quilloak.com/poems/a-pit-but-heaven-over-it
Quick facts
- Poem
- A Pit—but Heaven over it
- Poet
- Emily Dickinson
- Length
- 17 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Peace, Summer, Death & Loss
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 17 lines · 3 stanzas of 4–8 lines
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Emily Dickinson1830–1886
- Source record
- PoetryDBA Pit—but Heaven over it by emily-dickinson, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 c28178999933f7d9…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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