Recommended text: Emily Dickinson: Poems selected by Ted Hughes (Faber and Faber, 2004)

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers A Solemn thing within the Soul

There’s a certain Slant of light It was not Death, for I stood up

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted

That after Horror – that t’was us Victory comes late

A Clock stopped Because I could not stop for Death

The Soul Selects her own Society Through the strait pass of suffering

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants A narrow Fellow in the Grass

He fumbles at your soul Further in Summer than the birds

I’ll tell you how the Sun rose Great Streets of silence led away

After great pain, a formal feeling comes It sounded as if the Streets were running

I dreaded that first Robin, so A Route of Evanescence

‘Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch As imperceptibly as Grief

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died There came a Wind like a Bugle

Exam – 2 poets, 4 extracts – 1 essay on 1 poem (can talk about others related) – in detail, write about the
writing style, the style of the poet, relate poems one to another, group the poems thematically, create links
between one poem to another, contrast, particular extract, rest of the poem, the poetry of poets, other
poets, other works
 Safe in their Alabaster Chambers
THEME

- death, being with the dead – empathy towards the life of the dead
- the dead are safe, untouched by the outer world

SUMMARY

1st stanza – describes people safely sleeping in their Alabaster chambers =

tombs

- “untouched by morning, noon” – they don’t wake up

- “members of the Resurrection” – direct reference to Christianity

2nd stanza – the dead are unaffected by passing years

- “Crescent above them” – cloud refer to Heaven

- “World scoop their Arcs” – world completes a full circle in a year
- “Diadems – drop and the Doges surrender” – the kings and queen
change

The dead are safe and sound under the earth in their tombstone. They are untouched and carefree about
the changes that takes place on the outer part of the earth where the living beings reside. The morning, the
noon, day, night, years, decade, and seasons, even the empire change, but the people in the chambers are
unaffected. They are safe from the war and the unpleasant changes. They are safe even from the worldly
anxieties and sorrows. Nothing ever changes them and no change takes place on them too. They are no
longer affected by time, they are safely sleeping, sheltered by their chambers. With this fact, we can
conclude that even though we may die, time still goes on.

There’s a certain Slant of light

THEME

- how the sun in winter oppresses us

- takes smt specific and peculiar and shows how universal it can be
- light and air as an agent of god send despair and affliction on people

SUMMARY

1st stanza – the light weighs us down, oppresses us, like Christianity

2nd stanza – comes from heaven, as if from God, doesn’t change anything on
the surface, but the hurt is internal

3rd stanza – nobody can tell us what it means, “imperial” – affects

everything/God

4th stanza – affects the landscape, causes shadows, giving way to darkness, the
rhyming – death/breath – death overtaking the breath of life
 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
THEME

- aberration of the mind, gradual break-up of rational powers

- final onset of madness
- funeral is a metaphore of this theme – an appropriate symbol for the
decay of a mind
- emotions associated with funeral are experience by the speaker
- the symbol of funeral stands for the death of rationality – life to death
= sanity to insanity
- contrast – funeral has some rules and procedures whereas insanity has
no control
- x actual funeral of a newly dead person, the speaker is conscious of
their funeral

SUMMARY

1st stanza – a picture of a marching procession (possibly), weight of the

treading mourners

2nd stanza – the mourners are seated, the ceremony begins, a drum begins
beating repetitively – oppressing the speakers mind, so much so that the mind
is going numb

3rd stanza – already insufferable weight of the treading and drums – boots of
lead are added – suggesting the numbness and dullness of the mind

- the pall-bearers carrying the coffin “and creak across my Soul” – her mind is creaking,
disintegrating
- “then Space began to toll” – refers to the outside, external world – tolling the death bells
- drums – maybe last echoes of the beating of the heart

4th stanza – the heavens are like a huge bell and the speaker an ear listening to the bell tolling – heavens
calling to her

- “being but an Ear” – her senses are shrinking

- “some strange race” – she is not human anymore, something strange, that’s why she is “wrecked,
solitary” – she is alienated from the world of rational beings
- “Silence” – either, there is nothing but silence or there is no silence because of the bell

5th stanza – “Plank in Reason” – wooden floor as a metaphor for Reason – it breaks under the weight of
the mourners, etc.

- the speaker plunges to the condition of insanity, lunacy

- the last word – seems inappropriate, no continuation – a symbol for the disintegration of the
speaker’s reason
 That after Horror – that ‘twas us
THEME

- an aftermath of an accident, explores close encounter with death

- how close you are to death – either actual death or a death of a relationship
- she often writes about religion but not religiously
- a quiet walk along an old pier that goes horribly wrong

SUMMARY

1st stanza – a close encounter with death, as they leave it, a rock falls down,
they were saved by the hair

2nd stanza – if they did fall, it would be too deep, no one would be able to find
them, even the thought of it is “too much”

3rd stanza – “moment’s bell” – immediately

- instead of being a good god it is a conjecture (a negative word for belief)

- Face of steal – godlessness, with a metallic grin, cordiality od death –
irony, paradox – death is cordial as it embraces us – but we are not happy
about it – it’s all on the side of death, not us

This poem explores close encounters with death. Many scholars see it exploring death and the trauma
such an experience brings, especially for soldiers who experience battle. The “Face of Steel” with its
“metallic grin” suggests a “soldier looking into the barrel of a gun,” according to Dickinson biographer,
Cynthia Wolff.

The Soul selects her own Society

THEME

- people choose only a few companions to share their lives with

- it feels almost like a tragic love poem but could be both about
friend or a lover, or it might be spiritual (probably not)

SUMMARY

1st stanza – the speaker cherishes her privacy, “shuts the door on
divine majority” – ambiguous – shuts the door in front of or behind

2nd stanza – emphasizes the uncompromising attitude toward anyone

trying to enter her Society – no one can persuade her once the door is
shut

3rd stanza – illustrates the severity of the exclusiveness, she settles on only one person locking out
everyone else, the finality of the Soul’s choice

- “ample nation” – USA

 A Clock stopped
THEME

- the clock can be seen as human being dying – the clock is humanized in this poem
- x referring to religion, particularly the theology of Protestantism – Christianity
went through a crisis – even the clockmaker (Calvin) also failed to deliver
Christianity and it is dying

SUMMARY

1st stanza – a clock stopped and not even the best clock masters could mend it; the
puppet bowing, hanging, is still – motionless (lifeless)

2nd stanza – “hunched with pain” – death is usually accompanied by pain; “out of
Decimals” – just as our life is running out of days

3rd stanza – pendulum = heart, it will not move, not even for doctors, it has gone
cold, like a dead body; the owner of the clock tries to make it work again but “No”

4th stanza – various parts “nodding no” – oxymoron; “decades of Arrogance” – we

take either our body or other people for granted, we only begin to appreciate it/them after death; “Him”
could also refer to God;

- “the Dial life” – when we started counting the years, Christianity?

I’ll tell you how the sun rose

THEME

- she focuses on small ugly, grotesque elements in contrast to Romantics

- nature also includes these not so attractive elements (mushrooms)

SUMMARY

1st stanza – description of sunrise like ribbons, bathing the tops of churches in
deep purple, the news of the new day coming spreads quickly – getting
newspaper, maybe gossiping; “Bonnets” – maybe fog, birds start singing/children
start playing, shouting

- “That must have been the Sun!” – it is evanescent, fleeting, you barely
can’t really appreciate it when it’s happening, only after

2nd stanza – description of sunset, we don’t actually see the sunset, only the purple
“darkness”, “yellow children” – playing with the last bit of sun, climbing to the other side – the night, as
 One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted
THEME

- the real horrors are within us, in our own mind

- more selves than one (like Freud, but before him)

SUMMARY

- 1st stanza – the real horror can be within us, plus our mind is far larger
(infinitely) than any house, we can wander endlessly in the corridors of
our mind “surpasses Material Place”
- 2nd and 3rd stanza – it would be safer to meet a real ghost than being
unarmed meeting yourself – your own ghosts, demons (that are cold)
- 4th stanza – “ourselves behind ourselves” is the real horror, more than an
assassin hiding, our “external” self meeting the hidden one is what we
should be most scared of
- 5th stanza – the external body can protect itself, we can protect ourselves
from external danger but we overlook the real “problem”

After a great pain, a formal feeling comes

THEME

- grief, suffering, painful event or experience, even last moment of

life or mental pain, sorrow, trauma
- how the moment of great pain are followed by a feeling of
numbness, inactivity, inability to process the pain
- formal feeling – set recognition

SUMMARY

1st stanza – the formal feeling – numbness of the body, the heart is
stiff, yet it is possible to question religion – “He, that bore” – Christ
on the cross (blasphemy); “yesterday or Centuries before” – the
speaker has lost track of time, “formal, stiff, ceremonious, tombs” –
all word evoking coldness, numbness

2nd stanza – the body going rigid, the pain is affecting the whole movement of the speaker, yet there is
some sort of contentment with the feeling – compared to a stone, strangely

3rd stanza - “this is the hour of Lead” – the one of Jesus Christ when he saved us by his death or the hour
of despair rather than salvation, if you can remember it – it is like going through snow, freezing; last line
– full of dashes, as if the speaker was slowly moving through the snow, hardly able to go on and finally
letting go – either loosing all feeling or dying
 I heard a Fly buzz – when I died
THEME

- about the moment of dying, described by a dead person

- spoken from a perspective of a dead person describing their death
- flies are associated with death in that they feed on the dead

SUMMARY

1st stanza – describes the silence in the room of the dying person, she compares it
to the stillness of air before a storm

2nd stanza – the mourners also stopped weeping, the eyes had wrung themselves
dry, everything was silent as they were waiting for the person to die – for the King
(maybe Death)

3rd stanza – the speaker signs her will and testament, then the fly comes into the
scene

4th stanza – the fly “is stumbling” around the light, which might be an actual light (lamp/candle) or “the
light” last two lines – windows might be eyes, she could not see to see – in the afterlife??

‘Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch

THEME

- feeling of helplessness, nightmares

- If life is like a series of nightmares, why live?

SUMMARY

- describing something horrible, we don’t know what, written in second person, as if it was
happening to the reader
- first two stanzas describe some whirlpool you are being sucked into
- the maelstrom seems to be conscious – “toyed coolly with you” until it drowned the last piece
of you
- 2nd stanza ends with waking up from a dream just to wake up in another nightmare in the next
two stanzas – an inhuman Goblin with his paws is measuring your suffering hour by hour until
your last second, when you are numb and paralyzed
- God is also involved, he kinda forgets about you but then in the last second, he remembers
“When God remembered” – the Goblin lets you go
- next two stanzas – another nightmare – you are sentenced to Death and led to be hanged in the
gallows/gibbet (šibenice), then someone calls “Reprieve” and you are saved – the last line tough
suggest that maybe it would be better to finally die
What all of these events have in common is the feeling of helplessness. The Maelstrom, the Goblin, and
the Executioner all have the power of life and death. The Maelstrom and the Goblin are cruel, causing
pain and observing it for their own purposes. The judge sentences an innocent (perhaps) person to a
miserable death. The sufferer doesn’t have power to avoid pain or to inspire her rescue. Rescue seems as
inexplicable as pain.

Great Streets of silence led away

THEME

- sense of community x usually very personal

- social dimension of eternity
- reminiscent of the “City and the Sea” – (Poe) – nightmare quality

SUMMARY

- describing eternity in a negative way and as it affects community,

rather than an individual, as if the time has stopped but at the same time is never-ending
- contrast of human time measured and eternity
- juxtaposition of what is known to us and eternity that is blank
- “For period exhaled” – last breath – time itself dying
- “Here” – eternity

Sergio Baldi – ED is sure of immortality as she is of her mortal life, in this poem she describes how she thinks
it will feel like, the fact that she uses past tense and “here” for eternity demonstrate that she is certain of this

As imperceptibly as Grief

THEME

- imperceptibly – nepotřehnutelně; about summer or grief – 2 levels

- about the passage of time, particularly the summer as a departure of a guest,
natural cycle

SUMMARY

1st stanza – comparing summer to grief, that departures imperceptibly, without us

noticing, there is no “perfidy” – treachery because it is natural – we didn’t feel like
being deceived

2nd stanza – the speaker seems to consider grief s something normal, a part of being
human (like the changing of seasons), grief as long twilight, darkness

3rd stanza – after twilight, morning that is now foreign to us will come, eventually the
grief will fade, compares grief to guest that is courteous yet harrowing

4th stanza – the grief/summer leaves, instead of feeling hopeful and healed, it seems that she prefers grief over
the feeling of emptiness
 It was not Death, for I stood up

THEME

- about despair and depression, hopelessness

SUMMARY

1st and 2nd stanza – the speaker tells us what her condition is not – it isn’t death
because the dead lie down whereas she stands up, the darkness around her isn’t
night because she can hear the bells at noon, it isn’t frost, the coldness she fells
because she can feel the warm wind, it isn’t fire because her feet are cold – she
uses senses of sound and touch

3rd stanza – yet it feels like all of them – showing that it affects all aspects of
her life, it feels like death, so she describes a funeral with mourners

4th stanza – she is shaven of all emotion, it is suffocating, the key might be
understanding of her condition

5th stanza – she feels isolated, the time has stopped, there is no end to her
suffering

6th stanza – sense of hopelessness, no possibility of rescue or chance, she

imagines it as shipwreck – “no report of land”
 Because I could not stop for death

THEME

- death is personified as a Grim Reaper, the poem has a pleasant tone

- it is as if Death it is taking her on a date. personal encounter with Death
- the carriage ride is a metaphor for speaker departure from life
- people are usually busy and don’t think of dead, so death has to stop for
them
- Emily usually portrays death as polite, formal – something threatening in
that, despite the politeness, there is no appeal

SUMMARY

1st stanza – Death is personified as suitor, taking the speaker somewhere in a

carriage, “stopped kindly” – as if she welcomes him, 3rd presence – Immortality
(reminiscent of Poe’s psyche)

2nd stanza – the Death is in no hurry, the speaker shows willingness to go, shows
that she came to terms with her mortality

3rd stanza – sort of the “you see your life pass by” – childhood, “Grazing Grain” –
contemplates about her life

4th stanza – shift in the tone – they passed the setting sun, suddenly she is cold and realizes that she is
underdressed, wearing very light materials; “or rather he passed us” – as if she was already dead, passive

5th stanza – they arrive to their destination, a house=grave, the roof is in the ground

6th stanza – life goes on without her, in the realm of death, time has turned into centuries, yet for her it feel like
a day when she realized that the carriage was taking her toward eternity
 I dreaded that first Robin, so

THEME

- tone of melancholy but also she despises the Spring

- suffering – subtle, “Queen of Calvary” – mother Mary
- oss, pain and death – dealing with a loss of someone dear, wallowing in
melancholy
- nature – negatively, in contrast with Romantics

SUMMARY

1st stanza – relates Spring to the first Robin, she is dreading it, because winter and
cold suits better her emotion, however, she is used to spring now, but it still hurts

2nd stanza – if she could get through the initial days of Spring ,she could handle the
rest better, “Pianos in the Woods” – sounds of nature ?

3rd stanza – she has been mourning for so long that bright colors are foreign to her

4th stanza – she wishes the grass would grow faster to cover the graves and for the
season to change again

5th stanza – she wants the bees to stay away, they could symbolize people that may
want to socialize after the winter

6th stanza – despite all this, the Spring is here anyway, she refers to herself as “The
Queen of Calvary” – queen of suffering and sacrifice

7th stanza – she acknowledges that spring is here despite her suffering , she gives up
on her childish reasoning and she accepts the reality

There came a Wind like Bugle

- dramatizes the arrival and passage of wind storm – with an unexpected beginning “quivered through
the grass” until it gets strong “within the steeple wild”
- about how nature can withstand the gusts of wind while the storm creates chaos among human objects

A narrow Fellow in the Grass

- a description of a snake from a child-like perspective

The Mushroom is the Elf of plants

 - how mushrooms can be both delicious and poisonous

It Sounded as if the streets were running

- about a storm or a hurricane and the calm after

- “confuses” a moving with stationary object
- Charles R. Anderson – she gives body to the bodiless wind

Further in Summer than the Birds

- as summer comes to an end, watching nature becomes harder to watch but it is still satisfying
- birds are no longer in full song, crickets are singing
- sense of loneliness

A Solemn thing within the Soul

- describes a ripening soul until the harvest – death

- 1st stanza: we do not live in isolation, we notice other soul ripening and being harvested
- 2nd stanza: it is nice to feel the Sun, “give you core – a look” – God perhaps
- 3rd stanza: every day you are closer to death

A Route of Evanescence

- about nature, about a hummingbird

- evanescence – disappearing or fading
- the speaker is watching something taking the route of evanescence, describing the colors –
green and red
- the absence of verbs in the first four lines suggest speed, rush
- line 5 and 6 describe the emptiness the flowers feel after the hummingbird have left
- and in the last two lines, the speaker appreciates what they have just seen and wonder where it
came from (from Tunis?)

Victory comes late

- the poem explores the paradox – “too little too late”, it has a bitter tone
- the poem starts with a person freezing to death when they couldn’t be saved
- she questions God – his table is too high for us, we only get crumbs which is not enough
- last two lies – “God keep his oath to sparrows” refers to the Bible – “Heavenly father feeds
them” – Emily wants God to keep his promise and not let the birds starve
 - metaphor for happiness – it just come too little too late

He fumbles at your Soul

- theme – the horror of waiting for death, if this is about death than compared to other of her
poems, in this one, Death is not polite but rather rude
- “He” – could refer to God or Death, considering her stance toward religion it could be about the
terrors of God, who is sort of playing with you before you die
- comes in little by little “He stunts you by degrees – Prepares your brittle Nature”
- the sound of Hammers – the steps of Death, coming slowly closer and closer, you have time to
prepare – then death
- “Then nearer – Then so – slow” – makes you read it slower
- “The Universe – is still – ” – calm, tranquility after death (?)