IV.

A Stylistic Approach
IV.1 A specific use of stylistic devices
What we don't know about Emily Dickinson fills many books. The
identity of the man she called "Master" in her poems and her letters; the nature
of the "terror" that she "could tell to none," which informs many of her major
lyrics; whether carnal knowledge lay behind her intensely erotic imagination these and other mysteries have produced a small library of speculation. And as
for the poems themselves, critics endlessly debate Dickinson's images, tones,
intentions, and sources.
There's another mystery, which has to do with the poems as scripts for
performance. Anyone who has read Dickinson with care knows how her
insistent rhythms, pauses, and gaps or splices of thought create an unmistakable
"voice" that infiltrates and colonizes the mind of the silent reader. Similarly,
anyone who has heard, say, Aaron Copland's song cycle based on twelve
Dickinson poems knows how beautifully her work can be set and sung. But how
should her poems be said? She carefully preserved her work, so we can assume
she intended it to be read - but did she intend it to be read out loud? Given all of
her infamous ambiguities - eccentric punctuation, indeterminate parts of speech,
phrases that "float" syntactically - to decide how we say a Dickinson poem is, to
a large extent, to decide what it means.1
As an effort to avoid this extravagant use of potential, Dickinson
introduces stylistic devices that interrupt syntactic conclusion as a way of
56

suspending the loss of memory figured through linguistic declarations of self

that result in harmonious and therefore natural apparent embodiments of
dominant cultural values. Dashes, strategic manipulations of voice and a careful
ordering of poems are among the primary techniques she combines to define
speakers capable of consenting to historically grounded identities while
retaining a clear recollection of the self that consented to identity in the first
place. By this means, Dickinson gives special prominence to the way
imaginative power that can positively enliven the details of daily life also invests
those details with a particularity so compelling that they threaten to become
sources of entrapment. In order to sustain contact with the consenting self while
allowing for the delight that comes from historical engagement, Dickinson
creates an unsteady balance between the two that is largely dependent on
memory.
Emily Dickinson wrote many love poems, but the most emotionally
charged among them are not always the most successful. Especially when she
was pouring out her sorrow, the circumstances of her situation sometimes
defeated her talent. But there are major exceptions, several of them included in
the half dozen poems in this group. If one were to choose a title for this
sequence, it might be the phrase Calvaries of Love, which concludes There
came a Day at Summers full. Love, for Emily Dickinson, often led to a kind of
crucifixion of the heart and was associated with thoughts of evanescence and
loss.
What Soft - Cherubic Creatures These Gentlewomen are One would as soon assault a Plush Or violate a Star Such Dimity Convictions A Horror so refined
57

Of freckled Human Nature Of Deity - ashamed It's such a common - Glory A Fisherman's - Degree Redemption - Brittle Lady Be so - ashamed of Thee - (c. 1862)
The genteel ladies of Amherst here provoke Emily Dickinson to a kind
of erotic hilarity: one would as soon commit sexual assault upon a plush chair as
upon them, or attempt to rape a remote star. Society has labeled women as
fragile creatures with only one real desire in the world, to cater to a mans needs
and stay tucked away in the corner, hidden away from the worries of the
business world, the wars, and affairs of that butch nature. Yet, it is almost
inevitable that in every era of this world, a rebel is born. One woman who stands
and breaks the stereotype society so maliciously hangs over our heads. Times,
however, have changed. In the world we live today women have strong upper
hands in the way things are run in this country. A chance to stand and lea women
on that path of justice in a male dominated society seldom shoes its face and yet
so many women fail to see how much they truly are worth.2
They have a horror of human nature as it actually is: freckled, tainted, prone to
sin. Similarly, they feel that redemption should be reserved for the few, like
the A.B. degree at Amherst College; they are ashamed that it is available even to
fishermen (like St. Matthew).
The poem concludes with an expectedly severe irony: redemption and the
Redeemer wilt be ashamed of them. Whosoever shall be ashamed of me, of
him also shall the Son of man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of the
father (Mark 8:38).3
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun In Corners - till a Day
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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
Had let its pleasure through And when at Night - Our good Day done I guard My Master's Head 'Tis 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 -
Adrienne Rich's4 view of this poem: ...I think it is a poem about
possession by the daemon, about the dangers and risks of such possession if you

59

are a woman, about the knowledge that power in a woman can seem destructive,
and that you cannot live without the daemon once it has possessed you
The central figure in the following poem is remarkable, even shocking:
the female lover as a loaded hunting rifle stimulate into life by its huntsman
owner. It is an unconscious defiance of the Freudian theory of symbolism,
according to which a rifle is always a phallic symbol. But the poem gains much
of its strange force from Emily Dickinsons tact in sometimes exploiting the
implications of her symbol (as in the yellow eye of the gun barrel) and
sometimes contains them.
The poem is a type of ballad and conveys the same sense of closeness and
isolation as the old English ballad did, which, with the hymn book and the
rhyme, was still another source for the shape and tone of Emily Dickinsons
poems. It may be noticed, too, that the speaker was not only taken hold of by her
master, she was identified, and she was given identity. For Emily Dickinson,
love was an identifying emotion; before love a person is not even a he or a
she, but merely a neutral it. Congratulating a friend upon her engagement,
Emily once wrote: Till it has loved - no man or woman can become itself.
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
60

Might I but moor

To-night in thee!
This is perhaps the most truthfully erotic of Emily Dickinsons poems (the
most intense but hidden eroticism that one can find in a poem). It expresses an
almost violent physical passion for what she calls luxury, no doubt recalling
from her Latin studies that one of the meanings of luxuria is lust. Freudian
symbolism is again violated by the image of the male figure as the sea, in which
the female symbolically moors herself. One may keep in mind Emily
Dickinsons statement to Higginson: When I state myself, as the representative
of the verse, it does not mean me, but a supposed person; and in A narrow
Fellow in the Grass, she explicitly supposes herself to be a boy. The speaker in
the love poems, however, is invariably a woman.
Although this poem is hypothetical it still represents wishes or
desires:were I with you (If I were with you) and might I but. It carries the
implication that the speaker remembers her past pleasures and yearns for more.
The implication of the word luxury stands not only for lust but also for
voluptuousness, appetite. That heart in port actually represents her lovers
embrace. Surrendering themselves into sexual passion they are the instruments
of control and reason. The sea here is a common image for passion often met
throughout her poems, it makes us perceive the scene of a romantic movie with
the waves crashing. Rowing and moor in thee are in fact representative for
the sexual intercourse that takes place.
Another way of analyzing this poem is by portraying the religious
experience in which the lover is God himself. Christian mystics (people who
communicate directly with God) often describe their joy of communicating with
God in a language that modern psychoanalysts regard it as sexual. The speaker
finishes up by emphasizing on the fact that the Wild nights are being locked
one into another To-night in thee her only wish is to do nothing but moor in
thee.

61

The soul selects her own society,

Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.
Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.
I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.
The introduction offers some remarks about this poem and the one
specially chosen by Emily Dickinson as her society.
This poem also illustrates Dickinson's tendency to write lines in units of two. If
you look at the lines, you will see that all the lines in this poem are organized in
units of two. In this poem Dickinson appears to adapt Emersons concept of
selection5: A man's genius, the quality that differences him from every other,
the susceptibility to one class of influences, the selection of what is fit for him,
the rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the character of the universe.
Just like Emerson, Dickinson is not impressed by gifts or praise of society.
Each man has his own vocation and that means that his talent is his call.
His faculties invite him to an endless effort. By doing his own work he unfolds
himself. The same thing happens with the soul. Thus the Soul expands to a non
finite limit it has a self-reliant One that reaches for self - discovery. She does
not try to shut out books, a truly ample nation.
The decisive closing of the Valves of her Attention / Like Stone, can be read as
an emphatic example of the process outlined in the first two stanzas. Selecting
62

the joyful solitude of an Emersonian communion, the Soul should not become
permanently closed in a tomb - like world or frozen in a static posture. The
closed valves are after all considered valves of attention, the fact that they are
closed in a stone - like a fortress - emphasizes on the weight, the certainty of the
act of selection. Further on the use of the past perfect in the last stanza: Ive
known her, indicates that there were valves have been closed before. This
image suggests an alternation that takes place, just like the valves of the heart,
the valves of Soul can be both opened and closed. It symbolizes a way of
controlling the flow of ideas, events for the sake of memory and poetic talents.
Dickinsons poem offers a defense of isolation, self - reliance, exclusive
friendships and particular moments in her Souls conversation with her own
society.
Renunciation - is a piercing Virtue The letting go
A Presence - for an Expectation Not now The putting out of Eyes Just Sunrise Lest Day Day's Great Progenitor Outvie
Renunciation - is the Choosing
Against itself Itself to justify
Unto itself When larger function Make that appear Smaller - that Covered Vision - Here -(c. 1863)
In the following poem we hear Emily Dickinson meditating aloud,
63

examining slowly for the precise image, the painfully articulated series of
images by which the act of renunciation can be identified and made tolerable.
Renunciation is a virtue, but it is a virtue that wounds and must be explained to
the unconscious soul. How can renunciationthe choosing against ones inmost
desire, the acceptance of the covered visionbe made to seem the supreme
human gesture?
Words like expectation (perhaps of a life hereafter) and justify (as in
justification by faith) suggest that Emily Dickinson may to some extent be
drawing upon the Protestant doctrine of renunciation, the turning away from the
fascinating things of this world. That same doctrine haunted the Puritandescended imaginations of Hawthorne and, perhaps even more, of Henry James;
renunciation is one of the major themes of nineteenth-century American
literature. But like both Hawthorne and James, Emily Dickinson dramatizes and
personalizes the theme: for all its abstraction, this is a tremblingly personal
poem. For a visionary poet like Emily Dickinson, no more personally terrible
image could be created than that of putting out ones eyes just as the sun was
rising on a new day.
I Dreaded That First Robin, So,
But He is mastered, now,
I'm accustomed to Him grown,
He hurts a little, though I thought If I could only live
Till that first Shout got by Not all Pianos in the Woods
Had power to mangle me I dared not meet the Daffodils For fear their Yellow Gown
64

Would pierce me with a fashion

So foreign to my own I wished the Grass would hurry So - when 'twas time to see He'd be too tall, the tallest one
Could stretch - to look at me I could not bear the Bees should come,
I wished they'd stay away
In those dim countries where they go,
What word had they, for me?
They're here, though; not a creature failed No Blossom stayed away
In gentle deference to me The Queen of Calvary Each one salutes me, as he goes,
And I, my childish Plumes,
Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment
Of their unthinking Drums -
This poem can be placed alongside Whitmans When Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloomd, as putting side by side the sense of a profound loss with the
rebirth of nature in the spring. As with Whitmans poem, the source of loss is not
identified; nor should it be, as it has deepened into more general pain, she
mourns for what happens to life. Where Whitman, however, moves
characteristically toward a total merge and reconciliation of the conflicting
elements (lilac and star and bird and poet), nevertheless Emily Dickinson
characteristically faces up to the cruel indifference of nature, the fundamental
65

irreconcilability and lack of communication between the poet and the natural
environment.
During the period this poem was written, Dickinson became a withdrawn
person, somehow an outsider. Clearly, as the Queen of Calvary (Calvary was
the mountain on which Christ was crucified and it suggests extreme suffering
-the personification of torment itself) she found aspects of life that are both
painful and difficult. The Robin which she dreads so symbolizes the change
from winter to spring, whose urge to survive emphasizes the richness of life.
Dickinson evokes the anxiety in it.
The nightmare begins with the central stanzas - where the bird songs in the
woods would twist her in her raw emotional state, and the very charm of the
daffodils would pierce her - are subdued by the opening and closing verses,
where it is made clear that what she desperately feared would happen but which
did not quite. He hurts a little, though.
The third line -Im accustomed to Him grown -, shows Emily Dickinson
adapting, as she often did, a concise New England colloquialism for her poetic
expression. Dickinson has become used to the sight of the Robin, as it is such a
common sight in spring and she knows that she has to adapt : But he is
mastered now. That first shout could be a reference to the birdsong and it
symbolizes happiness which apparently depresses her. The Piano is another
term for a soft sound. In the verse I wished the Grass would hurry Dickinson
urges the grass to grow so that it could offer some sort of hiding place for her.
Despite her feelings nature is unavoidable, indifferent to her although Each one
salutes me, as he goes. Despite her hostility to nature it does not seem to be
hostile back. The plants, the bees and birds acknowledge her. Everything dazzles
her, the colours and the sounds.
This poem is a personal one, a confession; she looks at her life and sees
how dull it can be compared to the vitality of everything that surrounds her.

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After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes

The funeral service is again exploited to perform the damage of the spirit
by pain - or rather, in this more muted drama, the exhaustion of spirit in the
wake of pain. There is a loss of identity (if love gives identity, as Emily
Dickinson believed, intense suffering destroys it), and of any sense of time and
place. Everything is reduced or disconnected, even in the very texture of this
poem: verbs without predicates (bore), phrases unrelated syntactically (Of
Ground, or Air, or Ought -), a sort of rhythmic shrinking and dragging, a verbal
meaning into nothingness. She talks about emotional pain an experience that all
of us will endure at a certain moment in our lives.
As stylistic devices she uses alliteration to emphasize: formal feeling, s
sounds, h sounds tied together. In this poem there is no speaker, no I pronoun.
The sufferer is considered an object, described in body parts, without gender.
There is a lot of numbness in this poem, lack of feeling formal feeling,
ceremonious, like tombs, Stiff heart, freezing persons, wooden way,
like a stone. In this state of numbness the time becomes distorted, it is lost. We
perceive no end to this state of agonized numbness, because the poet is not sure
whether the numbness began yesterday or centuries ago And yesterday - or
centuries before?
In the second stanza there are presented a number of daily routines done
in a mechanical and wooden way, dehumanized. Finally we can observe
some sort of irony of feeling which is quartz contentment. To remember is to
have survived, and the hour of lead is remembered only if it is outlived.
After great pain a formal feeling comes The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions - was it He that bore?
And yesterday - or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
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Of ground, or air, or ought,

Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
One Crucifixion Is Recorded - Only
Here is a fine instance of Emily Dickinsons capacity to bond the Biblical
vocabulary to an account of her own psychic condition, with Gethsemane as a
province at the center of being:
One Crucifixion is recorded - only How many be
Is not affirmed of Mathematics Or History One Calvary - exhibited to Stranger As many be
As persons - or Peninsulas Gethsemane Is but a Province - in the Being's Centre Judea For Journey - or Crusade's Achieving Too near Our Lord - indeed - made Compound Witness And yet 68

There's newer - nearer Crucifixion

Than That -(c. 1862)

Presentiment - Is That Long Shadow - on the Lawn

This poem is a definition poem; she wrote a number of poems defining
words. A presentiment is a premonition, a feeling that something is about to
happen, usually something unpleasant or evil:
Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.
What used to be called Emily Dickinsons nature poems are more often the
poems in which the observation of some natural phenomenon stirs into being
some feeling or reflection on the poets part, to the point where a revelation
seems to linger on the rim of consciousness. It is at this point that Emily
Dickinson departs most dearly from Jonathan Edwards on the one hand and
Emerson on the other. Natural phenomena did nothing for her, as they did for
Edwards, it contained a system of types through which one could read the
divine scheme; she didnt have the confidence expressed by Emerson in
Nature that the objects close around us were perfectly understandable symbols
of the world of the moral law. Emily Dickinson was closer to Hawthorne in her
delicate sense of the ambiguity of natural things, yet she did not share
Hawthornes frustration over natures resistance to the inquiring eye.
The next six poems are variously representative of Emily Dickinsons
imaginative negotiations with nature.
A Light Exists in Spring
Emily Dickinson was peculiarly skillful in suggesting the teasing
conciseness of revelation, and even more the revelation that does not quite take
69

place. The following is a poem of scarcely and almost: a poem about

something that science and reason are unable to define, but that human nature
can distinctly feel:
A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period -When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.
It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.
Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.

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Further in Summer than the Birds

This poem is a fusion of powerful rituals: natural, Christian, and pagan;
and its collection of meanings (for it clearly cannot be reduced to a single
meaning) must be looked for within the ritual pattern. The crickets song
displays the passing of summer at the very height of summer; he is further in
summer than the birds in the sense that he is aware of autumns coming, he is
further along in time, in his own consciousness, than the birds arebecause he
is further into the secret of the natural cycle. The language of Christian liturgy
suggests that if nature will die by the end of the year, it will reborn later. But the
pagan element tends rather to separate the human observer from the natural
process and invests him with a feeling of loneliness and isolation.
This poem is generally considered to be one of Emily Dickinsons most
difficult. The complete lack of punctuation and its distinctive diction intensify
the ambiguity of he syntactical structure.
Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.
No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.
Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify
Remit as yet no Grace
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No Furrow on the Glow

Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now
Theres a Certain Slant of Light
This poem concludes the little cycle that began with A Light exists in
Spring and that continued through those that reflect on the height of summer,
late summer and early fall, and now winter.
Yet to borrow a phrase from Robert Frost, this is contrary stuff. The poem is a
collection of interacting contraries. To take a single example: the slant of light
observed (particularly in New England) on winter afternoons oppresses the soul
like the heft /Of Cathedral Tunes.
The poem was first published, in 1890, the editors polished up the authors
crudity by substituting weight for heftthus commit ting several kinds of
blunders. The colloquial heft is more pungent than weight; more important,
heft means not only a heavy weight but also the straining effort to lift such a
weight (to heave it upward: heave and heavy come from the same root). The
slant of light at once dominates and energizes one to shake off the depression;
even as the music of the cathedral bells is at once miserable and melodious.
Emily Dickinson always left her spiritual and psychological options

open:

Theres a certain slant of light,

On winter

afternoons,

That oppresses,

like

the

weight

Of cathedral tunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

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None may teach it anything,

Tis the seal, despair,An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.
When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, t is like the distance
On the look of death.
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
This poem was published anonymously in a journal called the
Springfield Republican, under the title The Snake. The poem goes on to
illustrate how snakes can be misleading. This creature sounds pretty harmless as
it is introduced in line one. The term narrow fellow is a nice use of the
colloquial language, narrow meaning small and fellow is a familiar term
given to a man or boy. The snakes reputation becomes the one of a tricky
tempter, who takes people by surprise. The poem is built around the contrast
between essence and appearance. The speaker recalls the time spent walking
through the grass barefoot. The word barefoot makes the speaker seem even
more vulnerable to the serpents potential threat. By mistaking a snake for the
lash of a whip on the ground, the speaker reaches down to grab it and is startled
to see it slither away.
Emily Dickinson was on friendly terms with a number of animals, as she says
here, but the snake never failed to make her feel (it is one of her most exact
metaphors) zero at the bone:
A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice sudden is.

73

The grass divides as with a comb,

A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.
He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,
Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,-When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;
But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.
I Read My Sentence - Steadily
In Democratic Vistas6, Walt Whitman argued that what American
literature needed above all else were poets who could write great poems of
death: In the future of these States must arise poets immense far, and make
great poems of death.
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He himself had, of course, already written several such, including Out of the
Cradle Endlessly Rocking and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd.
If in Emily Dickinsons case death was a reality constantly invading the scene of
mortal aspiration, nevertheless it was contradicted by the recurring hope of
immortality. These final seven poems display some of the twists and turns Emily
Dickinsons imagination so brilliantly took as it moved among the enormous
ultimates.
Emily Dickinson - rather like Albert Camus7 in some of his philosophical
writings - declares that the man is mortal by identifying him as being destined to
death. The sentence that is read and reviewed in the first lines, is the death
sentence. The poem then expands on that notion in a neat service of legal and
courtroom language - a somber parody, as it was, of the legalistic vocabulary of
Calvinist doctrine.
I read my sentence - steadily Reviewed it with my eyes,
To see that I made no mistake
In its extremest clause The Date, and manner, of the shame And then the Pious Form
That "God have mercy" on the Soul
The Jury voted Him I made my soul familiar - with her extremity That at the last, it should not be a novel Agony But she, and Death, acquainted Meet tranquilly, as friends Salute, and pass, without a Hint And there, the Matter ends -

75

Theres Been a Death, in the opposite house

On the level of a complete description - of the death of someone in a
nearby house in a small town - this is a perfect poem. The images follow one
another with gravely sharp precision: the houses numb look, the window
opening like a pod, a mattress thrown from the window, the arrival of the selfimportant minister, the childrens speculations, the coming of the undertaker (the
man of the appalling trade), the funeral procession. But by implication the
poem conveys means more than that, is about what is lacking in this rush of
activities, is about death being efficiently robbed of dignity and significance.
Theres been a death in the opposite house
As lately as to-day.
I know it by the numb look
Such houses have always.
The neighbors rustle in and out,
The doctor drives away.
A window opens like a pod,
Abrupt, mechanically;
Somebody flings a mattress out,
The children hurry by;
They wonder if It died on that,
I used to when a boy.
The minister goes stiffly in
As if the house were his,
And he owned all the mourners now,
And little boys besides;
And then the milliner, and the man
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Of the appalling trade,

To take the measure of the house.
Therell be that dark parade
Of tassels and of coaches soon;
Its easy as a sign,
The intuition of the news
In just a country town.
Because I could not stop for death
There is no reason to dispute Allen Tates pronouncement that this is one
of the perfect poems in English... if the word great means anything in poetry,
this poem is one of the greatest in the English language. Tates further remarks
can be taken as an interpretation:
The rhythm charges with movement the pattern of suspended action back of
the poem. Every image is precise and, moreover, not merely beautiful, but fused
with the central idea. Every image extends and intensifies every other. The third
stanza especially shows Miss Dickinsons power to fuse, into a single order of
perception, a heterogeneous series.
She has presented a typical Christian theme in its final irresolution, without
making any final statement about it We are not told what to think; we are told
to look at the situation.
Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
77

For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, be passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
We paused before house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
Mine - By the Right of the
If, in I heard a Fly buzzwhen I died, Emily Dickinson insinuated
with bold irony that death was simply and entirely the final loss of
consciousness, here, writing at another moment and out of different emotional
and imaginative pressures, she expressed the absolute belief that immortality
awaited her. A comparison with two other poems will help place this small
masterpiece. Its exclamations may remind us of Wild Nights - Wild Nights!
But there the theme is exclusively that of human and sensual love; here what is
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claimed is freedom from the grave, a soul purified (white) and regenerate, and
the life eternal (long Ages steal!). And where the legal language in 1 read my
sentence - steadily serves to rivet the acknowledgment of mans mortality here
the legalisms - right, seal, prison, bars, repeal, charter - all work in the other
direction.
At the same time, her euphoric vision of immortality has its effect upon her
sense of the earthly life. The human world is a scarlet (sin - infested) prison, as
against the white election promised her. More expressively, she asserts:
mine - here - in Vision - and in Veto! Here on earth, she is granted the vision
of eternal life, but she receives it at the cost of earthly desire. Immortality is the
quid pro quo of renunciation.
Mine by the right of the white election!
Mine by the royal seal!
Mine by the sign in the scarlet prison
Bars cannot conceal!
Mine, here in vision and in veto!
Mine, by the graves repeal
Titled, confirmed,delirious charter!
Mine, while the ages steal!

79

Notes

80

from American Literature Course, conf.univ.dr. Sava Ioan

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson/10353/comments

http://bible.cc/mark/8-38.htm

Adrienne Rich (born May 16, 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American feminist, poet, teacher,

and writer.
5

Concept developed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in one of his essays: Spiritual Laws
Whitman made a few predictions for the future of the U.S. in his essay, "Democratic Vistas". In

this November 1868 passage Whitman's prediction is mostly false; however, it does reveal a
confidence in an ever-expanding America.
7

Albert Camus (November 7, 1913 January 4, 1960) was an Algerian-French author and

philosopher. Although he is often associated with existentialism, Camus preferred to be known as a

man and a thinker, rather than as a member of a school or ideology. He preferred persons over ideas.