Some pale Teporter, from the awful doors
Before the Seal!
Next time, to stay!
Next time, the things to see
By Ear unheard,
Unscrutinized by Eye-
Next time, to tarry,
While the Ages steal-
Slow tramp the Centuries,
And the Cycles wheel!
has, “just felt the world go by!” as she is suddenly saved from death and her life flashes in front of her. She wonders about her next and ultimately last encounter with death as she resigns to the cycles of life. Unsuccessfully the speaker has ventured on the sea of death looking for something but seeing nothing. She has been called back with, “Odd secrets of the line to tell!” as she has seen the mysteries of the afterlife. This poem is representing Dickinson’s eagerness for vision into the afterlife but like most of the journeys in her poetry, this one fails. Using the imagery of a city with gates blocking entry into it, representing the unknown mysteries of death, the speaker of Our journey had advanced
Our journey had advanced –
Our feet were almost come
To that odd Fork in Being’s Road –
Eternity — by Term –
Our pace took sudden awe –
Our feet — reluctant — led –
Before — were Cities — but Between –
The Forest of the Dead –
Retreat — was out of Hope –
Behind — a Sealed Route –
Etermity’s White Flag — Before –
And God — at every Gate –
finds herself at the limit of life and before her unknown cities, she finds retreat impossible despite a hesitation to proceed. She is at the line between death and life represented when Dickinson writes, “Before – were cities – but Between – The Forest of the Dead.” As the speaker nears the end Eternity surrenders to her anxiousness as she sees, “Eternity’s White Flag.” The poem ends with victory as God welcomes her at the gate. Although the speaker completes her journey in this poem, she fails to answer the secrets of death that Dickinson is seeking. Like so many other of her poems the journey fails to satisfy Dickinson’s curiosity.
In many of her poems Emily Dickinson writes of a person on their deathbed as observers watch over her. A sense of uncertainty and uncontrollability about death exists and as the person dies, she leaves the question of the afterlife for the living to ponder as she does not leave any insight into the mysteries that lie before them. The observers remain jealous of the dying person, because they will finally see the answer to what lies in the afterlife. In I’ve seen a dying eye
I’VE seen a dying eye
Run round and round a room
In search of something, as it seemed,
Then cloudier become;
And then, obscure with fog,
And then be soldered down,
Without disclosing what it be,
‘T were blessed to have seen.
the eye is looks into death trying to find something. We are not aware if it finds something hopeful or disturbing, as the vision becomes cloudy. There is no control over the clouds, just as Dickinson has no control over what happens as you die. Finally the eye becomes completely cloudy and it dies taking the answer to Dickinson’s plaguing question. The observer remains jealous of the dead because they now know what lies beyond mortality and they must remain ignorant to its mystery. Again jealousy is exists over the dying person in the poem The last night that she lived.
THE last night that she lived,
It was a common night,
Except the dying; this to us
Made nature different.
We noticed smallest things, –
Things overlooked before,
By this great light upon our minds
Italicized, as ‘t were.
That others could exist
While she must finish quite,
A jealousy for her arose
So nearly infinite.
We waited while she passed;
It was a narrow time,
Too jostled were our souls to speak,
At length the notice came.
The survivors resent her continued existence in death as they struggle for preservation. She has consented to death and allowed herself to be taken away. What this all means is left for the attendants to wonder about, they are left withthe question about the implications of death for immortality. Although a need for other illuminations is evident, the “great light” intensifies recognition of life. The imagery of a person on their deathbed surrounded by mourners is used once again in I heard a fly buzz when I died.
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me
Could make assignable, – and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
The speaker anticipates dying so that she may obtain a vision that will a revelation so that she may conceive what is to come, but her hearing takes over and we don’t know of any vision. She becomes emerged in the sound of the fly’s buzzing representing the hold the living world has on the dying person as it dominates its thoughts even as it welcomes death. It is important to take notice that the fly is the last thing she sees and hears in life because it obscures her consciousness so that she is unable to tell her story from beyond the grave. Dickinson is again unable to use her imagination to place herself outside the world of the living and finally comprehend death and immortality, and she is left on the brink of understanding.
It is evident that throughout Emily Dickinson’s poetry she searched for the knowledge of what lies beyond life and in the mysteries of death and immortality. The conscious and imagination was used as a tool to discover whatever she might be able to find about life and death. This unanswerable question fascinated Dickinson more than anything did and she embarked upon a journey to answer it through her poetry.