For Each Ecstatic Instant
For Each Ecstatic Instant - meaning Summary
Joy Demands Proportional Sorrow
The poem states a simple moral: moments of intense joy demand a corresponding cost in suffering. Dickinson frames ecstasy as brief and acute, and its aftermath as prolonged, counted in "anguish" and "years." Joy is presented as transactional and disproportionate—the instant is ecstatic, the payment drawn out and heavy. The language conveys resigned arithmetic rather than celebration, suggesting human experience balances pleasure with enduring pain. Readers should approach the poem as a meditation on the price of happiness and the lasting emotional debts small raptures can incur.
Read Complete AnalysesFor each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ectasty. For each beloved hour Sharp pittances of years, Bitter contested farthings And coffers heaped with tears.
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