Soul, Wilt thou toss again?

Soul, Wilt thou toss again?

By just such a hazard

Hundreds have lost indeed—

But tens have won an all—

Angel's breathless ballot

Lingers to record thee—

Imps in eager Caucus

Raffle for my Soul!

                                                   - F 89 (1859)   139

The poet’s intellect or rational mind here interrogates her Soul. The Soul may or may not “toss again”—commit itself to something that is of great interest to both Angels, who wait breathlessly to record the outcome of the toss, and Imps who are eagerly raffling for a chance to own the Soul should the toss go their way. This would seem to indicate the stake is Heaven or Hell.

            The interestingly ambiguous word is “again” of “toss again”. It implies the Soul has already tossed once and the Self is asking if it won’t give Chance another go. For this is clearly not a rational choice. The gambling metaphor is quite specific, even down to the ratio of “Hundreds” versus “tens”. Clearly the odds are stacked in favor of the Imps as the Hundreds have ‘lost’ –which would be Hell, while only tens have ‘won an all’ – which seems clearly to mean everlasting life in Heaven.

            But if all this is so clear, why would the Soul leave all to a toss of a coin? Heaven seems a sure-fire commitment when given only the two alternatives. I think the poet may be contemplating another type of action or commitment whose eternal impact is unknown. For example, the commitment to Poetry and Truth may be a Heavenly choice—but it might also be wrong, wrong, wrong (to listen to preachers of the day who would only permit sanctioned sorts of poetry). In this case since one cannot know for sure the eternal impact of the choice, the Soul may as well toss for it.

            I think, however, that Dickinson is looking at the type of Christianity, the nature of her relationship to God. Having  tossed once before for the conventional –the church-going, hymn-singing, etc. variety, she is saying, shall we try something else? It may be better—in fact our salvation may depend on it—but there’s no way to know. I believe Dickinson did toss again and go in favor of her own iconoclastic beliefs where Bees stand in for God and the Woods for church, and where she more and more dedicates her life to thinking and imagining beyond the doctrine of her time and even (at this stage) begins the slow process of withdrawing from the public world. She took ‘the road less traveled’, and her poetry increasingly challenges, questions, and bruises itself upon questions of God, the soul, and what it means to be alive. I hope her toss took her to the Paradise she so often wrote of.