poems 349The theme of death informs the highly indi-
vidual structure of Dickinson’s poems. Their often
stark brevity and heavily condensed lines make them
reminiscent of epitaphs from a headstone, particu-
larly acute in poems that convey a sense of tribute
and memorial (“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers,”
“The Butterfly in honored Dust,” “Departed—to
the Judgement”). Dickinson’s idiosyncratic dashed
lines stage endless verbal deaths as ideas and state-
ments come quickly and then expire, each like a
last gasp of breath, leaving tenuous connections
between lines at times. Dashes inside the line halt
other progressions, such as the separation of subjects
from verbs evocative of the body departing from
the activity of life, as in “And Firmaments—row /
Diadems—drop—and Doges—surrender” (“Safe in
their Alabaster Chambers,” 1861 version).
Regardless of religious belief, Dickinson posits
that death ultimately leads to oblivion. Calvinists
may consider themselves as meek members of the
Resurrection, she contends in “Safe in their Ala-
baster Chambers,” but grand events on earth and
grand expectations of heaven (punned on in the
line “Grand go the years”) eventually dissipate as
human existence timidly evaporates like soundless
dots in snow. Often, death is announced by a rush
of cacophonic sound followed by silence, or a rush of
quick activity followed by stillness, as life gives way
to nothingness. So the heavens, or “firmaments,” are
said to “row” like thunderclaps before the erasure of
life into soundlessness, signaled in the poem by the
strong use of sound plays involving s and d in the
last two lines, as if all other sounds had been drained
from the poem, mimicking the extinction of life.
In “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” the funeral in
the brain is accompanied by the beat of a drum, the
creaking of the coffin and boots of lead, and a ter-
rific tolling as if a bell is being rung out from heaven,
before a great silence that triggers first an experience
of utter loneliness and then the end of conscious-
ness. At times, Death is personified as a musician,
fumbling at the piano-like keys of the soul like a
clumsy pianist, stunning the subject with a ham-
mering music before dealing a knockout blow like a
thunderbolt, which results in a stillness that sweeps
the universe (“He fumbles at your Soul”).
It is this oblivion where terror resides, not the
process of dying itself, according to Dickinson. By
contrast, death is almost a comfortable passage; the
gentlemanly Death passing by in a carriage offers a
slow, peaceful journey toward the grave, treating the
speaker to the sights of children playing at the local
school, the grain-rich fields, and a sunset (metaphors
for birth, growth, and death, respectively) as if on a
day out. When Death and the speaker arrive at the
newly dug grave, it welcomes them like a house, the
swollen earth resembling a roof, the headstone like
a cornice. The speaker who died for beauty quickly
finds companionship in the grave—also character-
ized as a house, with rooms in which corpses are laid
like guests assigned to bedrooms—meeting “One
who died for Truth”; they determine that beauty and
truth are one and the same, declare themselves fam-
ily, and converse as intimately as kinsmen between
the rooms until oblivion comes in the form of moss,
which fills their lips and obscures their names on
the gravestone.
Sarah Barnsleynature in the Poems of Emily Dickinson
Nature is as recurrent a theme as death in Emily
Dickinson’s poetry, characterized as an insistent
force which cannot be ignored. Its elements are
frequently personified, often as members of a tightly
knit community known to the speaker (“A Nar-
row Fellow in the Grass”) who impose themselves
regardless of their welcome. The wind is a tired man
who stops by to visit a speaker’s “Residence within,”
or consciousness (“The Wind—tapped like a tired
man”). The comings and goings of days, months, and
seasons are presented as visitors to the homestead
of the human mind, where November announces
its arrival by hanging its hat on a mossy nail in the
garden (“The Day grew small, surrounded tight”).
At other times, nature sends “sentinels” to seek out
the most determined of hermits (“To my quick ear
the Leaves—conferred”). Like death, Nature’s grip is
tight and inescapable.
Nature is a fertile subject for a poet preoccupied
with mental experience, as much an external drama-
tization of the relentless activity and vacillations of
the mind as it is a force in its own right. Extremes
of geography and weather convey the intensity and