Time and Time Again -- Part 2

In my blog entry dated July 14, 2012, I started a “Top Ten” list of my favorite references to the passage of time in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. In that post, I listed the first five of my favorites, numbers 10 – 6. Below are my top five favorites.

5. The optimism of #888:

When I have seen the Sun emerge
From His amazing House –
And leave a Day at every Door
A Deed, in every place –

Without the incident of Fame
Or accident of Noise –
The Earth has seemed to me a Drum,
Pursued of little Boys

My wife’s father used to greet people every morning by affirming it as “another day in which to excel.” In that regard, I love Dickinson’s image of the emerging Sun, leaving a “Day at every Door.”



4. The paradox of time presented in the 5th and 6th lines of #1715


Consulting summer’s clock,
But half the hours remain.
I ascertain it with a shock –
I shall not look again.
The second half of joy
Is shorter than the first.
The truth I do not dare to know
I muffle with a jest.


Of course, how could the “second half” of any event differ in length than the first half? However, Dickinson was exactly right – “Time flies when you’re having fun” – and in stating this maxim, she was much more eloquent.


3. The opening lines of #624


Forever – is composed of Nows –
’Tis not a different time –
Except for Infiniteness –
And Latitude of Home –


Just as in #4 above, I love Dickinson’s simple yet ingenious way of expressing a simple truth – that “forever is composed of nows.”


2. The boldness and originality of the opening image of #712


Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.


I believe that “Because I could not stop for Death” was the first Dickinson poem I ever read, and I remember being startled (in a good way) at the inventiveness of the opening image.


1. The extraordinary image of expressing grief that opens the final stanza of #341: “This is the Hour of Lead”:


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 –
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
A Wooden way
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 –


This is one of my favorites of all of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Her depiction of sorrow and mourning is both affective and complete. The severity and formality of grief is emphasized throughout the poem with precise images, from tomblike nerves to mechanical feet to stone-like contentment. Dickinson even indicates the stages of grief of a mourner in the final line of the poem – long before modern-day psychologists identified them.

My absolute favorite image of Dickinson’s allusion to time, though, occurs in the tenth line of the poem, “This is the Hour of Lead.” In many of her poems, Dickinson notes the paradoxical nature of time: even though time passes ceaselessly at a constant pace, one’s emotional ties to an event causes time to retard or accelerate, and in the case of tremendous loss, the initial minutes, hours and days seem to slow to a crawl. Then – in what could be the blink of an eye – the event will be one, two or ten or more years in the past. However, in the case of momentous tragedy, the experience, as it unfolds, begins with an “Hour of Lead.”

There you have it – my “Top Ten” images of the passage of time in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Do you agree? Do you have others? Which is your favorite?