Life—is what we make of it—

Life—is what we make of it—
Death—we do not know—
Christ's acquaintance with Him
Justify Him—though—

He—would trust no stranger—
Other—could betray—
Just His own endorsement—
That—sufficeth Me—

All the other Distance
He hath traversed first—
No New Mile remaineth—
Far as Paradise—

His sure foot preceding—
Tender Pioneer—
Base must be the Coward
Dare not venture—now—

   -F727, J698, Fascicle 35, 1863


Trying to follow the ins and outs of Dickinson’s thoughts on the Christian faith from poem to poem is a trip. In the poem two back from this one (in the order Dickinson wrote them down in a little sewn together booklet now categorized as Fascicle 35) we have the line, “Their Height in Heaven comforts not. Their Glory nought to me.” There are many lines which seem to reject Heaven in Dickinson’s work. And yet Christ is almost always a positive example.

Here Christ is a guide to the other side. “His own endorsement/ That sufficeth me.” Christ is endorsing Death, and that’s enough for the poet. Christ chose to die on the Cross. He was a “tender Pioneer.”* He ventured to die so that others may live.

As this is a Dickinson poem, we have some sticky points. First is the first line, “Life is what we make it.” That line counterbalances against the idea of Death that fills the other 15 lines of this poem. Death leads to paradise? Maybe? We don’t know. Christ says so and there were supposedly witnesses, but who really knows? So at the end of the poem we turn back to the beginning again: “Life is what we make it.” We have agency, here and now, to make of it what we will. In a much later poem Dickinson will write, “In this short Life that only lasts an hour/ How much - how little - is within our power.” (F1292)

Another wrinkle in this poem may be seen in the phrase, “Far as Paradise.” That Paradise seems all but unattainable. But this poem points to the idea that if we followed Christ’s example, then perhaps we would, indeed, be living in Paradise. This makes sense. If everybody had enough love for humanity that they were willing to lay down their lives for it, wouldn’t the world be much closer to a kind of paradise? But that “Far” is, as is pointed out in F724, impossibly high. There is a wry eye looking askance here: “All the other distance he hath traversed first. No new mile remaineth as FAR AS PARADISE.” But on the other side of death, who knows? The paradise we may reach is the better world we leave behind us. But that’s cold comfort.

Christ was exceedingly brave. He, or she, who does not venture to die for love, like Christ did, is a coward. And not just a coward. A base coward.

That’s heavy. Though Dickinson has previously sworn off Heaven, and glory, or any kind of reward, here she a coward anyone who will not follow Christ into a meaningful death. This is a challenge that goes beyond the pale.

One terrific thing about this poem is the line “His sure foot preceding.”

This poem has trochaic feet. If you don’t know the terms of poetic metrics, a foot is a beat that generally contains two syllables. A trochaic foot is one that starts on the heavy beat, like this, "TA da." Most of Dickinson’s poems, and the English language itself, tends toward the iambic foot, which starts on the soft beat and goes "ta DA." For a poet to invert the order of iambic rhythm to trochaic rhythm, there must be a good reason. Shakespeare, in one famous instance, uses trochaic meter whenever the witches speak in Macbeth, in order to “weird” the language of the Weird sisters. It also adds the sing-song quality of spells to their speech. In the case of this poem, Dickinson is using trochees to start each line off with a sure foot. Christ’s foot is sure. He steps to his death with purpose. So does this poem. TA da!


   -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


P.S. The “Him” in the first stanza of this poem, and throughout, is confusing. Death is personified in this poem, so Him refers to death. It is perhaps meant to be confusing. Him seems to belong to both Christ and Death in this poem, almost as if they were one in the same. And indeed, what makes Christ Christ is simply his sacrifice, which is brought about through Death. In a sense the two are inextricable. "Christ's acquaintance with Him/ Justify Him—though—" I think the ambiguity of that second Him is on purpose. They justify each other.

P.P.S David Preest writes of this poem, “Emily often expressed doubts about God, but in this poem she shows the same unwavering trust in Jesus that she had shown in poems J225 and J241.” Preest also makes a helpful parallel between this poem and 1433, "God sent his son to test the Plank [= the bridge between this life and the next] /and he pronounced it firm.’

*He was the tender pioneer. In the poem two before this one Dickinson writes of the glimmering frontier beyond the acres of Perhaps. If we connect the two poems we can see Jesus as the Tender Pioneer heading out into that glimmering frontier.