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I love Emily's poems...but sometimes they are a bit unsettling with the constant theme of death. Currently I have the first stanza of "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" in my head.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
Are there any good poems of Emily's that do NOT involve death in any way?
Hi, Inuzrule!
X.
IN A LIBRARY.
A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,
His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.
His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;
What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty.
And Sophocles a man;
When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,
He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true;
He lived where dreams were sown.
His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.
A very interesting and rare poem (as we know, her main themes include love and nature, faith and doubt, pain and suffering, death) of Emily you offered, Psych! This poem well captured the quality of an antique book which was very knowledgable, illuminating and pleasant. I cannot help imagining her with great affection holding the thick book which has been yellowed by age. She may have written it during her brief education at Amherst Academy?
inuzrule - in short - yes dickinson has poems that have nothing to do with death no matter how you look at them. "Hope is a thing with feathers" is one.
In more detail:
A very large number of her poems focus on death - much more than most other poets. But it certainly is not the only, or I'd even say the biggest theme of her works. It (together with depression) is perhaps the main theme focused on in schools and media probably because it distinguishes her from other poets ALOT so superficially it may seem the dominant theme.
Frankly when I read her work leasurly i tend to overlook the poems which obviously focus on death because I feel i cant understand them too well opting instead on stuff about nature, art and eternity. To me her poetry is unique enought without the death theme.
I have always like her poems on death, I think she manages to say much that hasn't been thought of before, in an original way. You have to remember that in the 19th century, death was much closer to our world than today. It was something that surrounded Emily, and she even lived by the Amherst cemetery ( not sure if it was when she lived in the Homestead), I believe and saw the funerals. To her era, it was normal to think more of death than we would today. She, was of course, particularly interested in it, but then I think that era encouraged her. She wasn't morbid, just curious about the life beyond, if there was a life. Her favourite book of the Bible was Revelations, that tells you of her interest in such matters.She liked to explore these kinds of questions, which is why she corresponded with Wadsworth, in my opinion.