As by the Dead We Love to Sit

As by the Dead We Love to Sit - meaning Summary

Grief Inflates Absent Worth

The poem considers how absence magnifies value: things or people gone feel more dear than those present. The speaker observes a psychological distortion in which loss creates an inflated estimate of worth, making the absent seem ‘‘vast’’ to impoverished, grieving eyes. Dickinson frames this as a kind of flawed calculation—an arithmetic of loss that yields disproportionate emotional returns. The tone is quiet and observant rather than overtly sentimental, registering both the tenderness and the irrationality of attachment after separation.