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exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Emily Dickinson

It might be lonelier (#405)

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Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness—
I'm so accustomed to my Fate—
Perhaps the Other—Peace—

Would interrupt the Dark—
And crowd the little Room—
Too scant—by Cubits—to contain
The Sacrament—of Him—

I am not used to Hope—
It might intrude upon—
Its sweet parade—blaspheme the place—
Ordained to Suffering—

It might be easier
To fail—with Land in Sight—
Than gain—My Blue Peninsula—
To perish—of Delight—

Editor’s essay: What is Emily’s “Blue Peninsula”?

We’re not informed; or maybe we are. There are hints to what it is not.

What she calls her “fate,” accustomed as it is, is not as dreaded as something else. It is possible to be more bereft, she realizes.

If she unwarrantedly sought for peace of mind, might not this questionable equanimity disrupt the meagre order of her life, dark though it may be? Could her small room contain an expansiveness of spirit? And, with this inflation, might she be dislodged from a certain sacred memory – of Him? This reminds of us of Dido’s song: after he left her, she did not want to rearrange furniture in the room as this could change her memory.

Emily's accustomed fate is braced by another familiarity: a companion of hopelessness. A new-found peace could profane the temple of her mind, consecrated to a memory of pain of loss – which is all she retains of Him.

But what is this “Land in Sight”? this "Blue Peninsula"?

Adrift in an ocean of mind-numbing grief, it is clear that Emily's lost someone she loves. Having steeled herself to this unforgiving reality, this fate, what good would it do to mentally envision a salvation that could never be? He’s not coming back.

Attempting to picture what she might want to see, “Land in Sight”, a hoping against hope for a drowning person, would avail nothing; accessing Him as a fantasy lover would cause her “To perish – of Delight”.

“My Blue Peninsula”, if it could exist, constitutes a rescue from her ocean of despair. This dry and solid land, we note, is colored “Blue” – Emily’s symbol (see her poem “A Slash Of Blue”) for freedom, largeness of heart, a vast and open-ended future of bliss.

However, it is easier, and more honest, for the drowning one to fail, to admit failure, as there will be no rescue from accustomed sorrows. Not in this life.

1775 poems