A Solemn Thing It Was I Said
poem 271
A Solemn Thing It Was I Said - context Summary
Composed 1861, Published 1891
Written in 1861 and published posthumously in 1891 in Poems by Emily Dickinson, Second Series, this short lyric stages the speaker’s serious meditation on identity, spiritual vocation, and the scale of earthly life versus eternity. Dickinson frames the aspiration to be a "woman white" and to surrender life to a sacred, irreversible fate, then checks that exaltation with an ironic, self-aware contraction: the supposedly small life enlarges until the speaker can mock the earlier solemnity. The poem reflects Dickinson’s recurring concerns with womanhood, inward authority, and the paradox of magnitude and modesty.
Read Complete AnalysesA solemn thing it was I said A woman white to be And wear if God should count me fit Her blameless mystery A hallowed thing to drop a life Into the purple well Too plummetless that it return Eternity until I pondered how the bliss would look And would it feel as big When I could take it in my hand As hovering seen through fog And then the size of this small life The Sages call it small Swelled like Horizons in my vest And I sneered softly small!
Feel free to be first to leave comment.