More Life Went Out When He Went
poem 422
More Life Went Out When He Went - meaning Summary
Grief as Extreme Cold
Dickinson presents loss as a withdrawal of a special, luminous life that ordinary measures cannot explain. She likens departure to an intense cold that some people need to reach their true, diminished state while others are snuffed out by the smallest breeze. The poem contrasts varying human resilience to bereavement and ends with an image of vivid peat indifferent to distant volcanic fury, suggesting private inner temperatures govern response to loss.
Read Complete AnalysesMore Life went out when He went Than Ordinary Breath Lit with a finer Phosphor Requiring in the Quench A Power of Renowned Cold, The Climate of the Grave A Temperature just adequate So Anthracite, to live For some an Ampler Zero A Frost more needle keen Is necessary, to reduce The Ethiop within. Others extinguish easier A Gnat’s minutest Fan Sufficient to obliterate A Tract of Citizen Whose Peat lift amply vivid Ignores the solemn News That Popocatapel exists Or Etna’s Scarlets, Choose
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