Linda's Literary Home

Tag: immortality

  • Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul’s Superior instants” 

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul’s Superior instants” 

    Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul’s Superior instants” dramatizes the soul’s ascent beyond worldly consciousness into the sublime perception of immortality.

    Introduction and Text of “The Soul’s Superior instants”

    Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul’s Superior instants” offers one of the speaker’s most concentrated musings on the nature of mystical awareness. The little drama portrays those elevated moments when the soul withdraws from earthly distraction and experiences its eternal connection to God, its Maker.

    The poem plays out in four quatrains, each deepening the speaker’s movement away from mortal limitation and toward spiritual omnipotence—a progression often encountered in Dickinsonian poetry. 

    As in many Dickinson poems, the speaker presents the soul as a being capable of transcending ordinary consciousness and entering a realm where immortality becomes not merely a theological notion but an intuitive certainty. 

    The great spiritual leader known as “the Father of Yoga in the West”Paramahansa Yogananda taught that “the soul is the true and immortal nature of man,” a realization perceived only with direct interior awareness. 

    The Soul’s Superior instants

    The Soul’s Superior instants
    Occur to Her – alone –
    When friend – and Earth’s occasion
    Have infinite withdrawn –

    Or She – Herself – ascended
    To too remote a Height
    For lower Recognition
    Than Her Omnipotent –

    This Mortal Abolition
    Is seldom – but as fair
    As Apparition – subject
    To Autocratic Air –

    Eternity’s disclosure
    To favorites – a few –
    Of the Colossal substance
    Of Immortality

    Commentary on “The Soul’s Superior instants”

    Emily Dickinson’s speaker depicts the soul’s temporary liberation from earthly consciousness into direct communion with Eternal Reality.

    First Stanza: The Ascendant Soul

    The Soul’s Superior instants
    Occur to Her – alone –
    When friend – and Earth’s occasion
    Have infinite withdrawn –

    The speaker opens by asserting that the soul’s “Superior instants” occur in solitude, after “friend” and “Earth’s occasion” have withdrawn into infinity. Earthly duties, social obligations, and even cherished companionship must recede before the soul can recognize its own higher reality. The speaker implies that spiritual revelation demands a stillness unavailable amid worldly distraction.

    The phrase “Earth’s occasion” suggests the temporary and often noisy events associated with physical existence. Dickinson’s speaker frequently distinguishes between the fleeting nature of earthly concerns and the permanence of spiritual truth, and here she dramatizes that distinction with unusual compression. The withdrawal of earthly circumstance does not signal loneliness but liberation into a deeper awareness.

    Paramahansa Yogananda repeatedly emphasized that the soul realizes its divine identity only after consciousness turns inward through meditation and silence. He explained that “when you close your eyes in meditation, you see the vastness of your consciousness—you see that you are in the center of eternity.” 

    The speaker’s solitude resembles that inward withdrawal in which the soul ceases identifying with outward activity and begins perceiving its immortal nature. It can do this only after transcending earthly noise and activity.

    The speaker’s insistence on aloneness also recalls the mystical isolation often dramatized throughout Dickinson’s poetry. Her speakers frequently inhabit a realm inaccessible to ordinary social understanding because spiritual intuition exceeds common perception. 

    As  I have elucidated in a number of commentaries on  Dickinson poems at Linda’s House of Letters, Dickinson often observes and professes mystical tendencies as the poet’s speakers often privilege inward revelation above public validation.

    Second Stanza: The Aboveness

    Or She – Herself – ascended
    To too remote a Height
    For lower Recognition
    Than Her Omnipotent –

    The second stanza shifts from withdrawal to ascension, as the speaker describes the soul rising to “too remote a Height” for ordinary recognition. The soul’s elevation places it beyond the comprehension of lower consciousness, and thus only the “Omnipotent” can fully recognize it. The movement dramatizes an ascent from finite awareness into divine perception.

    The phrase “too remote a Height” conveys not distance in a physical sense but transcendence beyond material categories. Dickinson’s speaker repeatedly portrays spiritual experience as inaccessible to those confined solely to sensory knowledge. The soul, once elevated, exists in a realm where earthly standards lose authority.

    The speaker’s use of “Omnipotent” implies direct relation between the soul and divine consciousness. Paramahansa Yogananda taught that the soul originates in Spirit and must eventually “climb back up the ladder of consciousness to Spirit.” The stanza enacts precisely such a climb, depicting the soul’s temporary escape from mortal identity into its higher inheritance.

    Dickinson’s mystical imagination frequently renders heaven not as a distant locality but as an altered state of perception. The soul’s ascension therefore becomes an inward enlargement of consciousness rather than a physical departure from the world. Paramahansa Yogananda similarly affirmed that “the highest wisdom is Self-realization—knowing the Self, the soul, as eternally inseparable from God.” 

    The speaker’s elevated soul can no longer accept “lower Recognition,” because ordinary human judgment cannot evaluate transcendent awareness. The soul’s superior instant grants knowledge that exceeds intellectual explanation. Such moments remain rare for the unself-realized because they require the temporary suspension of mortal consciousness itself.

    Third Stanza: Death’s Removal

    This Mortal Abolition
    Is seldom – but as fair
    As Apparition – subject
    To Autocratic Air –

    The speaker now characterizes the soul’s elevation as “This Mortal Abolition,” suggesting a temporary removal of mortal limitation. The word “Abolition” indicates not physical death but the suspension of ordinary worldly consciousness. Such experiences occur “seldom,” yet they possess extraordinary beauty and authority.

    The comparison to “Apparition” lends the experience an ethereal and supernatural quality. The soul’s superior instant appears almost ghostlike because it transcends material certainty and sensory verification. Dickinson’s speaker often portrays spiritual realities as elusive presences glimpsed briefly through intuition.

    The “Autocratic Air” suggests sovereign spiritual authority. During these superior instants, the soul recognizes a reality beyond earthly systems and conventions. The elevated consciousness assumes command over fear, limitation, and mortal uncertainty.

    Paramahansa Yogananda frequently taught that human beings mistakenly identify themselves with temporary bodily existence rather than immortal soul-consciousness. He declared, “You are immortal; your trials are mortal.” Dickinson’s speaker dramatizes precisely such a release from mortal confinement, presenting the soul’s revelation as both rare and magnificent.

    The stanza’s imagery also evokes the delicate boundary between life and death that Dickinson explored throughout her poetry. Yet the speaker does not fear this “Mortal Abolition”; instead, she portrays it as beautiful and liberating. The experience resembles a mystical foretaste of immortality rather than annihilation.

    Fourth Stanza: The Vastness of Immortality

    Eternity’s disclosure
    To favorites – a few –
    Of the Colossal substance
    Of Immortality

    The final stanza reveals the culmination of the soul’s superior instant: “Eternity’s disclosure.” The speaker suggests that only “favorites – a few” receive such revelation, emphasizing the rarity of profound mystical experience to humanity in general. The disclosure grants direct intuition of immortality’s “Colossal substance.”

    The phrase “Colossal substance” conveys overwhelming spiritual magnitude. Immortality is not presented as abstraction or doctrine but as a living reality, immense beyond comprehension. Dickinson’s speaker attempts to compress infinity itself into poetic language.

    Paramahansa Yogananda taught that beneath human limitation exists an eternal identity untouched by death or suffering. He affirmed, “The ocean of Spirit has become the little bubble of my soul,” while insisting that the soul remains inseparable from divine consciousness. Dickinson’s speaker arrives at a similar realization through intuitive vision.

    The poem closes without returning fully to earthly awareness, allowing the final word, “Immortality,” to resonate with solemn grandeur. The speaker leaves readers suspended before the vastness of eternal existence itself. Dickinson’s speaker thus transforms a brief mystical instant into a revelation of the soul’s infinite destiny.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “Whether my bark went down at sea”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “Whether my bark went down at sea”

    Emily Dickinson’s “Whether my bark went down at sea” reveals the speaker’s serene contemplation of the soul’s destination after it departs the physical encasement.  She is envisioning a mystery so absolute that no earthly eye can resolve it—only a deeper, inward faculty of perception.

    Introduction and Text of “Whether my bark went down at sea”

    Emily Dickinson’s “Whether my bark went down at sea” is an American-Innovative lyric composed of two quatrains. Each stanza alternates between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, held together by Dickinson’s characteristic slant or near rime, with the rime scheme playing out roughly ABCB in each stanza.

    The poem thematically divides itself into two equal dramatic movements: the first stanza catalogues the uncertainties of the soul’s departure, while the second stanza redirects attention from all those unresolvable questions toward the one vital act of seeking. 

    The speaker of the poem is dramatizing the human condition of unknowing;  that is condition in which no amount of rational inquiry can ascertain where the soul has gone or how it arrived there.

    Such beloved features and qualities of life, such as the sea, the gale, enchanted isles, and mystic moorings, all function in this poem as richly suggestive metaphors for the soul’s voyage beyond the physical plane. On a second note, the speaker also quietly establishes that the proper response to this mystery is not despair but active, searching attention—the outward sweep of the eye across the Bay.

    On the literal level, the poet is creating a speaker who surveys the unknown fate of a vessel whether it sank, was storm-tossed, or sailed to some enchanted destination. The vessel (“bark”) serves as a figure for the soul in transit, as it does in so many classical and mystical traditions of poetry and spiritual teaching.

    Because the destination of the bark remains radically uncertain, the speaker catalogues each possible fate in a series of parallel “whether” clauses, a rhetorical structure that enacts the very uncertainty it names. The poem’s form thus performs its meaning: the anaphoric “whether” accumulates unanswered questions that resist resolution on the terrestrial level.

    Posing as a brief riddle in the tradition of the sea-voyage lyric, Dickinson’s little drama serves as a musing on the inscrutability of the soul’s journey after death. By leaving every question open and redirecting the gaze outward to the “Bay,” the speaker suggests that active, loving attention is the only honest posture before the great mystery.

    Whether my bark went down at sea

    Whether my bark went down at sea –
    Whether she met with gales –
    Whether to isles enchanted
    She bent her docile sails –

    By what mystic mooring
    She is held today –
    This is the errand of the eye
    Out upon the Bay.

    Commentary on “Whether my bark went down at sea”

    Emily Dickinson’s “Whether my bark went down at sea” reveals an attitude of profound equanimity before the mystery of the soul’s passage—an attitude resonant with the mystical traditions the speaker drew upon in her long, contemplative solitude.

    The poem is a contemplative musing on the unknowable fate of a beloved soul, where the speaker catalogues every possible destination and then quietly turns the whole inquiry outward into an act of searching, reverent attention.

    First Stanza: Whether This or That

    Whether my bark went down at sea –
    Whether she met with gales –
    Whether to isles enchanted
    She bent her docile sails –

    In the first stanza, the speaker begins by introducing an unnamed vessel—”my bark”—whose fate remains entirely unresolved, suspended in a sequence of parallel questions that pile one upon another without resolution. 

    The use of the possessive “my” is not incidental: the bark belongs intimately to the speaker, suggesting that this is no impersonal vessel but rather a cherished soul whose journey the speaker has watched and cannot stop watching.

    The speaker then unfolds three possible fates: that the bark went down at sea, that it met with gales, or that it sailed serenely to “isles enchanted.”  Thus the poem’s formal symmetry makes no distinction among them, granting each the same weight. 

    That the bark’s sails are described as “docile” is one of the stanza’s subtlest and most moving details: the word suggests a soul that submitted willingly to whatever course the greater wind decreed, neither resisting nor lamenting its direction.

    The “isles enchanted” carry particular resonance within Dickinson’s imaginative world, where the otherworldly realm frequently appears as a kind of luminous, removed geography accessible only to the mystically attuned. 

    As noted in the “Life Sketch of Emily Dickinson” at my lit home, Linda’s Literary Home, the poet “lived a solitary life that in many ways paralleled that of a religious monastic,” and her deep contemplative practice gave her an unusually direct intuition about such otherworldly destinations—that they are neither fable nor mere metaphor but a genuine, if unseen, plane of existence.

    Second Stanza: Then Such and Such

    By what mystic mooring
    She is held today –
    This is the errand of the eye
    Out upon the Bay.

    In the second stanza, the speaker shifts her rhetorical inquiry from sequential questioning to a single, overarching wonder, essentially asking by what invisible anchor is the bark presently held? 

    The word “mystic” performs a great deal of work here, quietly confirming that whatever mooring detains the bark, it belongs to no earthly harbor and cannot be mapped by any nautical chart. The speaker does not mourn this unknowability; she names it with the calm precision of a mystic who has grown comfortable dwelling at the edge of the visible.

    The phrase “held today” is quietly startling: the bark, though departed from every familiar shore, is not lost or destroyed but positively held—secured, in some present and ongoing way, by a “mooring,” which the physical eye cannot locate. 

    This assertion is the poem’s most consoling proposition, and it echoes the teaching of Paramahansa Yogananda, who explains in “Understanding Death and Loss” that the soul, far from being destroyed at death, exists in continuing reality:   “We exist, and that existence is eternal.  The wave comes to the shore, and then goes back to the sea; it is not lost.” 

    Paramahansa Yogananda often employed the wave/ocean metaphor to explain the relationship of the individual soul to God.  Similarly in Dickinson’s poem, just as the wave does not cease to be because it is a part of the ocean, the bark that “went down at sea” has not ceased to be; it has simply passed beyond the range of the physical eye into a different mode of existence.

    The final couplet—”This is the errand of the eye / Out upon the Bay”—resolves the poem’s formal tension with a gesture that is simultaneously humble and active. All the unanswered questions of the first stanza, all the accumulated uncertainty, converge into one clean, clarifying act: the eye goes out upon the Bay. 

    The eye does not cease its searching; it does not abandon the bark to oblivion; it performs its one possible service—the loving, attentive gaze directed toward the water where the vessel last was seen. In this way, the speaker models what grief and love, at their most dignified, actually do: they watch, and they wait, and they continue to look.

    The poem is, finally, one of Dickinson’s most compact and formally nearly perfect riddles. The bark may have been destroyed, storm-damaged, or lured to enchanted shores; the speaker cannot determine which, and the poem refuses to pretend otherwise. 

    What the speaker can do—what the poem performs for the reader as well—is keep the eye upon the horizon, sustaining attention toward a mystery that the physical senses cannot penetrate but that the soul, as Dickinson’s long monastic practice had taught her, already knows from the inside.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “I often passed the village”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “I often passed the village”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I often passed the village” dramatizes the speaker’s recognition that death remains a quiet and loving continuation of existence.

    Introduction and Text of “I often passed the village”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I often passed the village” employs the poet’s characteristic hymn-like cadence and slant rime to fashion a musing on death that remains oddly tender instead of terrifying. The speaker moves from childhood curiosity to spiritual intuition, finally offering solace to those who fear loneliness, confusion, or mortality itself.

    I often passed the village

    I often passed the village
    When going home from school–
    And wondered what they did there–
    And why it was so still–

    I did not know the year then–
    In which my call would come–
    Earlier, by the Dial,
    Than the rest have gone.

    It’s stiller than the sundown.
    It’s cooler than the dawn–
    The Daisies dare to come here–
    And birds can flutter down–

    So when you are tired–
    Or perplexed–or cold–
    Trust the loving promise
    Underneath the mould,
    Cry “it’s I,” “take Dollie,”
    And I will enfold!

    Commentary on “I often passed the village”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I often passed the village” reveals the speaker’s effort to transform the fear of death into a loving spiritual promise.

    First Stanza: Wondering

    I often passed the village
    When going home from school–
    And wondered what they did there–
    And why it was so still–

    In the first stanza, the speaker recalls passing a mysterious “village” while returning home from school. The child speaker remains fascinated by the silence surrounding the place, wondering what activities occur there and why such profound stillness dominates the atmosphere.

    The “village” is clearly a cemetery, but the speaker cleverly avoids naming it directly. As in many Dickinson riddles, the speaker permits readers gradually to intuit the truth rather than stating it openly and directly.

    The phrase “going home from school” also subtly implies humanity’s passage through earthly existence. School symbolizes the soul’s earthly training ground, while the silent village represents the inevitable destination awaiting every traveler on the physical plane.

    The speaker’s youthful curiosity resembles Paramahansa Yogananda’s teaching that death should not be feared because “life and death are only different phases of one continuous reality.” The spiritual master repeatedly reminded devotees that the soul merely changes states of consciousness rather than ceasing to exist.  

    Like the speaker in Dickinson’s “There is another sky,” this speaker senses another realm existing behind ordinary appearances. The child may not yet understand death intellectually, but intuition already whispers that the silent village conceals an important spiritual mystery.

    Second Stanza: Not Knowing

    I did not know the year then–
    In which my call would come–
    Earlier, by the Dial,
    Than the rest have gone.

    The second stanza shifts from childhood wondering to mature realization. The speaker now understands that one day her own “call” will come, summoning her into that same silent village she once regarded with innocent curiosity.

    The term “call” softens the harshness of death by suggesting invitation instead of annihilation. The speaker does not portray death as violence but as a summons issued according to divine timing.

    The line “Earlier, by the Dial” implies that the speaker expects to die relatively young. The “Dial” symbolizes the clock of earthly time, which measures each individual’s appointed span within mortal existence.

    Dickinson frequently portrayed earthly life as temporary residence while hinting that eternity remains the soul’s true homeland. The speaker now recognizes that her own departure will arrive “earlier” than others expect, yet she accepts that destiny calmly rather than rebelliously.

    The stanza echoes the speaker’s confidence found in “There is another sky,” where a permanent metaphysical realm surpasses earthly mutability. In both poems, the speaker demonstrates unusual composure before realities that traditionally provoke fear and despair.

    Paramahansa Yogananda often taught that intuitive souls gradually perceive death not as catastrophe but as transition. His observation that “the soul is ever free, untouched by birth and death” harmonizes remarkably with Dickinson’s serene handling of mortality. 

    Third Stanza: Naturing

    It’s stiller than the sundown.
    It’s cooler than the dawn–
    The Daisies dare to come here–
    And birds can flutter down–

    The third stanza offers further description of the mysterious village. The speaker compares the place to twilight and dawn, two naturally quiet transitional moments that already suggest movement between worlds.

    Yet the village remains “stiller” and “cooler” than either sunset or sunrise. Such comparisons elevate the cemetery into a realm existing outside ordinary earthly motion and noise.

    The speaker’s nature imagery softens the starkness of death. Daisies “dare” to enter this place, while birds confidently descend upon it, implying that nature itself recognizes no ultimate separation between life and death.

    Flowers and birds continue to flourish around graves because nature engulfs cyclic renewal. Human beings alone recoil emotionally from death, while, apparently, the natural world calmly accepts transformation as part of divine order.

    The speaker’s use of the verb “dare” subtly acknowledges humanity’s fearfulness. Even so, the daisies possess courage enough to bloom near the graves, suggesting that innocence and beauty can survive in the presence of mortality.

    Dickinson’s speaker resembles the poet-speaker of “There is another sky,” who fashions a permanent garden untouched by decay. Both speakers envision spiritual continuity overcoming earthly transience and corruption.

    Fourth Stanza: Trusting in Love

    So when you are tired–
    Or perplexed–or cold–
    Trust the loving promise
    Underneath the mould,
    Cry “it’s I,” “take Dollie,”
    And I will enfold!

    In the final stanza, the speaker directly addresses future mourners and sufferers. Those who feel “tired,” “perplexed,” or spiritually “cold” are instructed to trust the “loving promise” lying beneath earthly burial soil.

    The phrase “underneath the mould” transforms the grave from frightening abyss into sacred shelter. The speaker insists that divine love persists even beneath the physical earth covering the body.

    The intimate expression “I will enfold” conveys warmth, comfort, and protection. Instead of depicting death as isolation, the speaker imagines it as loving embrace and spiritual reunion.

    “Dollie” likely refers to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, the poet’s beloved sister-in-law and intimate companion. The speaker’s affectionate tone therefore intensifies the emotional tenderness permeating the poem’s conclusion.

    Like the speaker in “There is another sky,” this speaker invites loved ones into a realm untouched by earthly sorrow. The invitation finally becomes not merely literary or imaginative but profoundly spiritual and eternal.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “My wheel is in the dark!”

    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “My wheel is in the dark!”

    The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “My wheel is in the dark!” is making a statement about knowing without sense perception.  This subject especially interested the poet, who was specifically concerned with issues such as immortality and life after death.

    Introduction and Text of “My wheel is in the dark!”

    Despite the grammatical error in the last line of Emily Dickinson’s “My wheel is in the dark!,” the speaker’s revelation shines through clearly and offers a unique perspective about the nature of understanding and explaining the ineffable.

    My wheel is in the dark!

    My wheel is in the dark!
    I cannot see a spoke
    Yet know its dripping feet
    Go round and round.

    My foot in on the Tide!
    An unfrequented road –
    Yet have all roads
    A clearing in the end –

    Some have resigned the Loom –
    Some in the busy tomb
    Find a quaint employ –

    Some with new – stately feet –
    Pass royal through the gate –
    Flinging the problem back
    At you and I!

    Commentary on “My wheel is in the dark!”

    Rendering information about the ineffable level of being is virtually impossible, but through use of poetic devices and other literary language that rendering becomes somewhat meaningful and therefore understandable to the mind and heart.

    First Stanza:  Vision by Implication

    My wheel is in the dark!
    I cannot see a spoke
    Yet know its dripping feet
    Go round and round.

    The speaker reports that she is capable of knowing that the spoke on a wheel moves in a circular motion as it drips water even though there is no light on the wheel.  She is revealing that she, as all human beings are, is able to infer information without direct sense perception that might otherwise reveal such knowledge.

    Human beings prefer to rely on what they can “see” or “hear.”  But sometimes seeing and hearing are not possible.  For example, human beings are convinced that love and hate both exist, even though they cannot see the concepts to which those nouns refer. 

    The ultimate argument ensues from the issue of whether God exists.  Some will argue that because he cannot “see” God, then God must not exist.  The argument runs further as the atheist insists that he also cannot hear, feel, taste, or touch God—and what cannot be experienced through the senses, therefore, does not exist.

    The speaker in “My wheel is in the dark!” thus counters such an argument by demonstrating that not only is metaphysical knowledge based on intuition and inference but also simple knowledge about things like wet wheels that go round and round in the dark.

    Second Stanza:  An Uncharted Path

    My foot in on the Tide!
    An unfrequented road –
    Yet have all roads
    A clearing in the end –

    The speaker continues with her comparison stating that she is walking an uncharted path, but she knows, again by intuition and inference, that this road will eventually lead to “a clearing.”  

    Despite the danger, such as would be experienced by having one’s foot “on the Tide,” the speaker can, with fairly great certainty, be assured that all the danger and complexity of the road she walks will end, and all will be understandable when she moves into that landscape which features clarity.

    The speaker places that clarity at the end, which is at the end of her life, a time at which she will come to the end of the path and enter the “clearing.”  Her “unfrequented road” is unique as is each road each soul must frequent as it passes through life on the physical level of being.

    Third Stanza t:  Resigning the Loom

    Some have resigned the Loom –
    Some in the busy tomb
    Find a quaint employ –

    The speaker now reports that others have departed from this world.  She indicates that departure by referring to their occupation while alive.  She colorfully claims that some of the folks who have died simply “resigned the Loom.” 

    But she does not offer a catalogue or list of what resigners have resigned.  By mentioning one earthly occupation only, she implies that that “Loom” not only refers to the occupation of weaving but also to the fabric that exists as life itself.

    Thus those “some” that have “resigned” from the fabric of life find a different way to engage their time and effort “in the busy tomb”; she claims that they “find a quaint employ.” 

    The speaker is reporting from her intuition that after death the soul will continue its engagements, even though its engagements after leaving the physical encasement will be different.  They nevertheless will be “quaint,” an obviously optimistic claim.

    Fourth Stanza:  Remaining Mum about the Afterlife

    Some with new – stately feet –
    Pass royal through the gate –
    Flinging the problem back
    At you and I!

    Those souls who will remain busy with quaint engagements, however, are not the only class of souls that the speaker intuits.  In addition to those who engage in the those quaint pursuits, there are those who will become similar to royalty.  They will possess “stately feet” and enter the kingdom of heaven on those stately feet.

    The speaker then returns to the world but without any definitive answer about what the real differences are between life and afterlife.  When those of the royal, stately feet pass through that gate into paradise, they will not reveal their new experiences; they will simply be “flinging the problem” into the faces of those left watching for wheels “in the dark” and walking “on the Tide.”  

    Only those who have actually passed through that heavenly gate will understand what that experience offers.  Thus we–”you and I”–will continue to speculate about that experience, as the speaker has done in this poem and the many more that are to come.

    Dickinson and Grammar

    As Dickinson’s readers discover, the poet often misspelled words and left her grammatical constructions a little cockeyed.  Thomas H. Johnson, the editor of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, who restored her poems to their near originals, has revealed that he did correct some misspellings. 

    And it remains unclear why he left the inaccurate grammatical construction, “At you and I!”; the correct pronoun form in that prepositional phrase is “me” instead of “I”—the objective case is required after a preposition.  

    A reason for leaving such an error could be to complete a rime scheme, but that is not the case with this line.  As a matter of fact, by inserting “me” instead of “I,” a partial rime would be achieved: “feet” would become a partial rime with “me.”    Nevertheless, this problem remains a slight one. No meaning is lost despite the grammatical error.   Such errors may interfere with the total enjoyment of a poem.

    However, readers need not become alarmed about them unless they interfere with understanding. Luckily, this error does not confound meaning, and comprehension of the poem remains clear and unobstructed, despite the slight distraction that inaccurate pronoun inflicts.