Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers,
Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers, - meaning Summary
Silent Graves, Worldly Indifference
The poem presents a calm, distant view of the dead laid "Safe in their alabaster chambers," contrasting their silent, untouched repose with the lively, heedless world of breeze, bees, and birds. Time and grand cosmic motions continue above them while the buried are immobile and absent. Dickinson meditates on death's finality and the ironic loss of human thought or wisdom, emphasizing silence, separation, and the indifference of nature and history.
Read Complete AnalysesSafe in their alabaster chambers, Untouched by morning and untouched by noon, Sleep the meek members of the resurrection, Rafter of satin, and roof of stone. Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine; Babbles the bee in a stolid ear; Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadences, Ah, what sagacity perished here! Grand go the years in the crescent above them; Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row, Diadems drop and Doges surrender, Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.
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