Those who have been in the Grave the longest—

Those who have been in the Grave the longest—
Those who begin Today—
Equally perish from our Practise—
Death is the other way—

Foot of the Bold did least attempt it—
It is the White Exploit—
Once to achieve, annuls the power
Once to communicate—


      —F938, J922, sheet 16, 1865


I'm on vacation for a few weeks so I asked a friend of the Bee, Tom Clyde, if he would fill in for the next few poems and he graciously agreed. Here is Tom with some clarity on F938.    

I think of this poem as an argument about death and the limits of language.

In it, Dickinson leads her readers, one logical step at time, towards a shocking conclusion.

By the end of the poem, words are no longer adequate. More than that, they cease to be meaningful — which is, in fact, the conclusion of her argument about the nature of death as well.

This confluence of form and content is remarkable.

As we so often see in Dickinson’s work, the alignment of meter and sound to meaning is done with the utmost care. I would suggest that this is why her poems so often linger with us, long after their syllables and sounds have faded from our minds.

So let’s try to figure out how Dickinson does it, shall we? To do so, I propose that we consider the technical aspects and thematic content of this poem one line at a time.

*

First line:

Those who have been in the Grave the longest—

The first thing we notice as we enter the poem is that Dickinson begins in a trochaic meter — that is, she opens with “THOSE who,” a two-syllable unit with a stressed beat followed by an unstressed beat. DA-da.

THOSE who HAVE been IN the GRAVE the LONGest—

As we read on we soon discover that not only this line, but the entire poem, continues in this insistent, surging, trochaic meter.

This is not a tentative poem. Dickinson has something to say. (And we are here for it!)

The first line has 10 syllables, dimly evoking the pentameter that Shakespeare uses in the sonnets. But here the five two-syllable units are slapping at us, like waves hitting a rock, as opposed to the more gently lapping iambic pentameter the Bard usually employs.

The content of this opening line also slaps us into attention. For “Those who have been in the Grave the longest” conjures a grim image in the back of our minds, doesn’t it? “Those” are no doubt mere skeletons now. Perhaps some hair and fingernails laying about? Have the planks of their coffins completely collapsed onto them at this point?

Let’s see where she goes from this ghastly opening:

Those who begin Today—

Yikes! It doesn’t get any easier with the second line.

The same trochaic insistence, and now perhaps a warning to the reader: “Today”! She doesn’t contrast those who have been in the grave the longest with something benign… like, say, “the recently departed.” Instead, she leaps to the present tense.

It could be me! It could be you! It is happening now, in 2026, as much as it did for Dickinson in 1865.

We read on to find out what Dickinson sees as linking those in the grave longest and those dying today:

Equally perish from our Practise—

All living things are equal in death. It will come to everyone, high or low. Horace: Mors ultima linea rerum est. Death is the final limit for everything. John Donne: "Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.” Here Dickinson draws from a long tradition, with which she would have been familiar, noting the leveling nature of our mortality.

When Dickinson uses the word “practice” in this line (we equally perish “from our Practice”), this may be read as a reference to the habits of life, the “practice” of daily living. We perish from it, in the sense that we are taken away from it.

Or, alternatively, we might read this line about perishing from “our Practice” as saying that we perish from it in the sense of dying because of it. As we go about our lives, experiencing all the exigencies of circumstance, something will inevitably happen because of our choices. Might it be a pile-up on the highway? A cut leading to an infection? The onset of cardiovascular disease? In effect, we can expect to take a wrong turn at some point — which will lead to our perishing.

I favor the former reading of this word “from” — that is, that we perish from in the sense that we are taken away from our “Practice” of life. But both readings of this line have interesting implications, which inform the fourth and final line of this first stanza:

Death is the other way —

I love the vagueness and mystery of this line. A path leads another way, around the corner, just under that leafing branch, into the shadows, and — we are gone.

In this sense our existence is always binary: death is the other way than living. It is both a departure (again, from as taken away) and it is a consequence (from as because). In both, there is no other way but this other way.

What else need be said? Indeed, nothing more sensible can be said, since this “other way” of death confounds reason — scratch that, it subsumes reason. It eliminates thinking and consciousness and reason — and therefore language — altogether.

*

The second stanza likewise follows the trochaic meter of the first. In terms of syllables it runs 9-6-9-6 (where the first stanza ran 10-6-9-6). So Dickinson begins to approach the common or “hymn” meter she usually writes in (8-6-8-6, iambic), but never quite gets there. She stays in that insistent, slightly elongated rhythm.

At the end of the first stanza, as we have seen, we are aware of the ineluctable nature of death, and also its power as a force that levels equally. Now in the second stanza she hints at more specific and futile attempts to surmount death— the folly of real people trying.

Foot of the Bold did least attempt it—

The odd thing about the adventure of death? Everybody attempts it. So you can’t point to the most bold and courageous and say that really truly gave it a go, more than anyone else. In fact, this line made me realize that the most bold will probably be the ones to fight the hardest to live, and so they will be the most reluctant to face death! Dickinson distills this profound observation down to a single line: “Foot of the Bold” — we can imagine the tough, calloused foot of an Odysseus or a Sojourner Truth — will, surprisingly, be the least likely foot to test those waters.

Foot of the Bold did least attempt it —

It is the White Exploit—

Here Dickinson uses this word “White,” which she employs occasionally in her poems for very distinct purposes. At the end of the long poem, “I cannot live with You” (F706), she writes of “that White Sustenance — / Despair.” There she seems to imply a quietude, an acceptance of remaining forever slightly removed from her beloved (“the Door ajar”), as if that particular despair has a relationship to silence and oblivion.

Why would silence and oblivion present as Whiteness to Dickinson? Perhaps because white is every color reflected back at us? Perhaps it contains everything to her? As she asks in another poem, “Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White Heat’?” (F401)

It also occurs to me that white is the color of ash. Ash evokes death, and is silent. When we see ash, we know that Vesuvius has spoken and now is done.

Yet another way to read this phrase, “the White Exploit” — an entirely different way — is to imagine death in Dickinson’s mind as a destination like the North Pole or the South Pole. If we read it this way, then “the White Exploit” here may be intended to suggest a great journey (with colonialist, um, coloring).

Recall that Edgar Allen Poe published his short novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket in 1838, when Emily Dickinson was eight years old. She probably read it, or had it read to her, as a girl. In that novel the protagonist and his shipmates land on a misty, white, snowbound land somewhere near the South Pole. Drawing from the fervor for Arctic exploration in that century, Poe evokes the thrills and danger of approaching the very limits of the known world.

In the mid-19th century the concept of Whiteness certainly informed the energy of colonial exploits across the globe. What more “bold” realm to conquer and subdue than death?

But even if “White Exploit” carries this secondary, racially-charged meaning (I am not convinced it does, but I thought it was worth considering), then Dickinson surely intends it ironically. For in the final two lines of the poem she offers a reality check to such delusions (and a rejection of any racist, culturally-driven nonsense).

The poem concludes:

Once to achieve, annuls the power

Once to communicate—

Good luck with that, she seems to be saying.

Achievement annuls communication; your exploit was for nothing.

*

A brief story. Many years ago, when I was tucking my son into bed (he’s now 22, but I think he was about 6 at the time), we stumbled into a conversation about death that I never forgot…

“You know, George,” I offered. “A famous writer named William Shakespeare once called death ‘the undiscovered country’.”

“Why?”

“Because none of us really knows what happens after we die.”

I thought that was it, but then I noticed that my son was still deep in thought, looking past me. When he finally spoke, he did so in a hushed, serious voice:

“Shakespeare’s wrong, Dad.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. ‘Cause death has been discovered. It’s just that nobody has been able to report back!”

*

That conversation came to mind when I read these last two lines of this poem.

Once to achieve, annuls the power

Once to communicate —

That final dash!

The rest is silence.


Nobody can report back. George was right. That’s just it.

Thus Dickinson offers us a totally unsentimental and unsparing take on death. (What would Dickinson have had to say to her fellow poet W. B. Yeats, with all his interest in the occult? I suspect she would have had very little.)

It is, of course, not unusual for Dickinson to end a poem with a dash. But the one here, in effect cutting off any further “communication,” feels particularly poignant, doesn’t it?

It is a dash which leads to blank page.

It is the conclusion of an argument which says, good luck with that.

The confluence of form and content is seamless.

Long dead or dying today, foot of the bold or foot of the meek…it’s coming for you. And once you achieve it, this other way of death annuls all power to communicate. It is true to itself and no other.

*

But I don’t want to end without acknowledging that there is a positive aspect to this conclusion too. Dickinson’s bracing examination into the nature of death and the limit of language reveals, in a kind of negative afterimage, the joy of being alive.

We can still communicate now! Dickinson demonstrates that to us in this very poem.

When you think about it, that’s what the Prowling Bee readers are doing on this blog, even in the face of our inevitable, impending deaths (sorry).

And very, very rarely, someone can even communicate past death, as Dickinson has, paradoxically, managed to do with this same poem.

In the words she wrote by hand on a scrap of paper all those years ago, Dickinson, dead long ago, is still slapping us awake. She is talking to us, this very instant, about the miracle of being alive.

     -Tom Clyde

Antarctica as seen from outerspace