Emily Dickinson

Her Sweet Weight on My Heart a Night

poem 518

Her Sweet Weight on My Heart a Night - meaning Summary

Memory Versus Dream

The poem describes a brief, intimate visit from a beloved whose presence may have been dream or waking. The speaker wrestles with uncertainty: was the encounter a dream confirming heaven, or was the speaker the object of the beloved’s dreaming? That ambiguity leads to a theological pivot: the living, tangible experience is valued above abstract belief, a "fiction" that nonetheless supersedes faith because of its felt reality.

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Her sweet Weight on my Heart a Night Had scarcely deigned to lie When, stirring, for Belief’s delight, My Bride had slipped away If ’twas a Dream made solid just The Heaven to confirm Or if Myself were dreamed of Her The power to presume With Him remain who unto Me Gave even as to All A Fiction superseding Faith By so much as ’twas real

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