'Tis true—They shut me in the Cold—

'Tis true—They shut me in the Cold—
But then—Themselves were warm
And could not know the feeling 'twas—                    [And] did
Forget it—Lord—of Them—                                         [it – ] Christ

Let not my Witness hinder Them                                [Witness] Them impair
In Heavenly esteem—
No Paradise could be—Conferred
Through Their beloved Blame—

The Harm They did—was short—And since               [was] brief
Myself—who bore it—do—
Forgive Them—Even as Myself—
Or else—forgive not me—                                                Else – Savior – banish Me –

                                                            Fr658 (1863)  J538

The poem is framed as a prayer where the speaker asks that the Lord forget and forgive how the beloveds, the 'They', shut the speaker out in the Cold. By this prayer the speaker becomes, ironically, the informant.

She makes the case that the shutting out was an understandable rather than a cruel act: the perpetrators' happiness made them unable to recognize or even understand sadness.

I'm not buying it. The beloveds were cads and the speaker doesn't really mind if you think so.

 

Arthur Rackham, The Lady
Enters the Forest

Judith Farr believes, as I do, that this poem is directed at Sue and Austin Dickinson, both of them beloved by Emily Dickinson. After their marriage, though, amid a growing family and growing social prominence, neither Sue nor Austin held Emily Dickinson quite so central to their lives as they had previously (The Passion of Emily Dickinson, pp. 155-6). So the shutting out might refer to a specific episode or to something that occurred over a period of time. At any rate, the speaker claims that the Harm was 'short' – but this might be another ironical deflection. It might have felt like an eternity to her.

About being an informer: It is quite possible to read the first line of the poem as suggesting that someone else or some cosmic awareness led the Almighty to know about the shutting out situation. The second stanza, however, makes it clear that the speaker knows she herself is the source. It is her 'Witness' that might complicate the beloveds' afterlife.

            The speaker prays that it does not hinder them, for, in a continuation of the ironical mode, if it's her fault they don't make Paradise, they could blame her for it. And Paradise won't be "Conferred" on her if she is being blamed. Farr reads this as "I myself won't find Paradise by blaming them." I can't agree with that reading because the speaker indicates Paradise must be conferred rather than found.

The third stanza argues for forgiveness. This is quite a pivot from the forgetting prayed for earlier. It is one thing to tattle and then pray that the information is forgotten or ignored and quite another to ask that the informed-on behavior be forgiven. And should it be forgiven because the sinners are contrite or otherwise blameless or that the victim was at least partly to blame? No. the speaker argues that the beloveds should be forgiven because, besides the Harm being 'short', it was the speaker not the Lord who was shut out.  Further, she has forgiven them, so the Lord should, too. 
        The last line of the poem is more in the way of a demand than a prayer. 'If You, God, don't forgive Them, then don't forgive Me'.  The sentiment doesn't seem sincere. The prayer has included blame and then blame qualified. There is no sense of her own guilt about having given negative 'Witness'; no admission of even general sin for which she might wan to be forgiven. To reject forgiveness when there is not a felt need of it, is empty bravado.

I recognize that the poem can be read as heartfelt, its pathos a reflection of the sensibilities of the time. But I can't help thinking of Shakespeare's use of verbal irony – Antony, for example, proclaiming the nobility of Brutus in a way that conveyed the opposite opinion. I like the idea that Dickinson was able to sit down with her sense of grievance and put a twist on it.

As a proponent of the heartfelt pathos reading, Jane Donahue Eberwein includes this poem with those written in a 'childlike voice' and those where a little child might slip 'quiet from it's chair' into the grave, or meekly take the smallest room; where an adult is but a 'Drop that wrestles in the Sea', or is a Nobody (Dickinson: Strategies of Limitation By Jane Donahue Eberwein).

That makes sense, but I still feel the poem's scorn.