1277
While we were fearing it, it came --
But came with less of fear
Because that fearing it so long
Had almost made it fair --
There is a Fitting -- a Dismay --
A Fitting -- a Despair
'Tis harder knowing it is Due
Than knowing it is Here.
They Trying on the Utmost
The Morning it is new
Is Terribler than wearing it
A whole existence through.
It looks like in the first stanza ED claims that long waiting made fear almost fair, but in the second stanza she refutes it stating the opposite: “'Tis harder knowing it is Due/
Than knowing it is Here.” Yet, in the last stanza ED seems to come back to the idea expressed in the first stanza: it is less terrible (note an irregular comparative degree "terribler" almost in the manner of Lewis Carol’s Alice ("curiouser and more curiouser") to wait the entire life for a (the Utmost) Disaster than waiting for it (“fearing it so long”) “A whole existence through.” Any teacher of English would have marked it as incoherent.
Пока страшились мы, сам страх
Пришел, но меньше стал в пути,
Так долго мы страшились, что
Он сносным стал почти —
С ним рука об руку идут
Смятение, Отчаянье —
Знать много легче, что он Тут,
Труднее — Ожиданье.
Но встретить Роковой Удар,
Подставить грудь Судьбе
Ужаснее, чем целый век
Носить сей груз в себе.