I'm ceded — I've stopped being Theirs —

"I'm ceded — I've stopped being Theirs —" is the fourteenth and final song in Leo Smit's song cycle Childe Emilie. Childe Emilie is the first of Smit's six song cycles setting the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

For more information about Leo Smit's Emily Dickinson song cycles, please visit the pages for The Ecstatic Pilgrimage and Leo Smit.

For inquiries about Leo Smit, please contact Nils Vigeland at [email protected].

Date: 1990Composer: Leo SmitText: Emily DickinsonSong Collection: Childe Emilie

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Text

I’m ceded — I’ve stopped being Theirs — (poem 508)
by Emily Dickinson

I’m ceded — I’ve stopped being Theirs —
The name They dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church
Is finished using, now,
And They can put it with my Dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools,
I’ve finished threading — too —

Baptized, before, without the choice,
But this time, consciously, of Grace —
Unto supremest name —
Called to my Full — The Crescent dropped —
Existence’s whole Arc, filled up,
With one small Diadem.

My second Rank — too small the first —
Crowned — Crowing — on my Father’s breast —
A half unconscious Queen —
But this time — Adequate — Erect,
With Will to choose, or to reject,
And I choose, just a Crown —

Sheet Music

Childe Emilie

Composer(s): Leo Smit

Song(s): 1. I was the slightest in the House
2. Through lane it lay - through bramble
3. It troubled me as once I was
4. The Child's faith is new
5. Softened by Time's consummate plush
6. Papa above!
7. We talked as Girls do
8. They shut me up in Prose
9. I cried at Pity - not at Pain
10. Let Us play Yesterday
11. A loss of something ever felt I
12. Good Morning - Midnight
13. Up Life's Hill with my little Bundle
14. I'm ceded - I've stopped being Theirs

Voice Type: Mezzo-Soprano, Soprano

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