Before Me – Immortality –
Myself – the Term between –
Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray,
Dissolving into Dawn away,
Before the West begin –
‘Tis Kingdoms – afterward – they say –
In perfect – pauseless Monarchy –
Whose Prince – is Son of None –
Himself – His Dateless Dynasty –
Himself – Himself diversify –
In Duplicate divine –
‘Tis Miracle before Me – then –
‘Tis Miracle behind – between –
A Crescent in the Sea –
With Midnight to the North of Her –
And Midnight to the South of Her –
And Maelstrom – in the Sky –
-F742, J721, Fascicle 36, 1863
Let me just swoon for a moment before I begin to dive into this poem. It’s so beautiful to hear yourself say. It’s a meditation on time immortalized in the most sumptuous language imaginable.
The music, acting subconsciously, is what gives me that wonderfully visceral sensation. The content is making my mind whirl, but it's the music bolstering the sense, so controlled, yet flowing, that mesmerizes me.
A good way to read a Dickinson poem, I find, is to read it out loud and pay attention to the most prominent consonant sound, watching all the while the way Dickinson weaves it through the poem. The heaviest alliteration in this poem is on the D sound, so try reading the poem just listening for it. It’s studded with Ds. Then read it again, listening for that scattering of Bs in the first stanza and Ps in the second. Notice the way the B and P works in percussively with the D. You begin to consciously hear the soundscape in bits and parts, full of plosive detonations.
This sets us up for a softening in the last stanza with all of those “M” sounds mellowing the mouth, that double “Miracle” and double “Midnight,” the "Me" (echoing the "Myself" in the first stanza) and then that final double “M” of “Maestrom.” MMMMMM. That "Maelstrom" should be a little scary, the maelstrom of our lives over our crescent sea-selves, but because of the eternity stretching out on both sides of us, and the mellowing out sound of the poem itself, the maelstrom just hangs there, threatening, but unable to reach the depths of the Sea.
There is a storm above you and absolute endless midnight black darkness on both sides, but here you are in the depths of your moment, in your “Immortality/ Myself,” and the poetry here, at least, is very beautiful.
Another gorgeous use of sound in this poem is at the end of each line, the open vowel rhymes weaving in and out with the N and R sounds. This is a remarkable rhyming pattern:
Ee, ee, een, ay, ay, in, ay, ee, none, ee, ee, ine, en, een, ee, er, er, aye.
I mean, come on! The music of those sounds are primal and sublime. What’s the effect of it on the body? The open vowel sounds feel as if they are open ended to eternity. And eternity, itself, is softened by the feminine N and R sounds, while the harder sounds are in the middle of the lines. The ends of the lines are open to endlessness.
This is why I swoon. And still, we have barely gotten into the content of this poem.
The poem starts with the revelatory idea that "Eternity" stretches out behind the self and then becomes something more -Immortality- which then lies forever before you. There is a shift, with the advent of your birth, from mere eternity, which may as well be lifeless, to something human, a something carrying within it a divine immortal spark. So how does the mortal emerging from eternity become immortality? This is the question that is being begged by the beginning of this poem. Immortality, and what it means for Dickinson, is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and something she herself thought about all of her life, as is evidenced by her letters and poems.
Dickinson’ poems, for one, feel immortal, not because they will last forever, though I'm sure they will last a very long time, but because they ring so True in the moment.
The word for the self in the third line is “Term,” which has a nice double meaning. There is a "term" meaning unit of time, and there is "term" meaning name. Dickinson conflates these two meanings of the term “term” in this poem, and in doing so shows us the way identity is tied into time itself.
“Death but the drift of Eastern Gray.” The Eastern Gray is the color of sky coming coming in from the East behind you as the Sun recedes in the West before you, just after sunset (or, in poetry-parlance, death). Emily’s decision to capitalize the G of “Gray” gives the color its own significance. It’s as if it were a color on a paint swatch: “Eastern Gray”.
“Dissolving into Dawn away/ before the West begin.” The day is already dawning away behind you. Soon the West, or, in poetry-parlance, death, will begin.
As is so often true with a Dickinson poem, you could stop after the first stanza and it would still be a perfect poem. But this poem is just getting warmed up. The second stanza begins:
“‘Tis Kingdoms – afterward – they say –”
First we take note of the plural of Kingdom. That’s rich. It’s not one Kingdom. We all have our own idea of what heaven might look like, and this vision is tied into our king-like egos. Then we note the wry eyebrow-raise of “they say”. Dickinson is wary of the idea of an afterlife. “They say” seems to infer lack of proof.
In perfect – pauseless Monarchy –
Whose Prince – is Son of None –
"Perfect" is suspect. It seems boring. Pauselessness even more so. (We love a pause don’t we? A recess? These Dickinson lines, written a year or so before this poem, instantly come to mind, “I don't like Paradise –/ Because it's Sunday – all the time –/ And Recess – never comes .”
The Prince, we note, is Son of None. This is a clever play off of “Son of Man.” If Christ is perfect, then He is not the Son of Man, but the Son of None. No man is perfect, therefore what use is it if Christ is?
Himself – His Dateless Dynasty –
Himself – Himself diversify –
In Duplicate divine –
This is a poem that tends toward now, toward the “term,” toward the “date," so "Dateless Dynasty" is just not where it’s at. It’s in the moment, in the life. You could take the line "Himself – Himself diversify in duplicate divine" as just “more of the same.” But I can also see it as a turning point in this poem, a moment in which Christ diversifies to become an imperfect individual being, to become each of us, during our term here on earth. There are several poems where Dickinson identifies with Christ. A perfect God is not so interesting to Dickinson, but the courageous human Christ in each of us is a worthy ideal. This potential Christ-self, in which we are willing to transcend our singularity for the sake of love, is where Immortality begins.
That is perhaps the "Miracle before me" with which the third stanza begins. There have been Christs (Miracles) behind us and there will be more Christs (Miracles) before us too, if we can only but follow that miraculous example.
But what is between? “A Crescent in the Sea.” What do you make of that? I take it as the crescent shape of the sea itself, which is shallow at both ends and deep in the middle. It could also be the reflection of the moon in the sea, which would be natural with Midnight to the North and South. The reflection of the moon in the Sea makes a gorgeous metaphor for the self. The word crescent comes from the latin “crescere,” which means to grow. This ocean is still growing. It’s not perfect, rather it is in process. (It's a stretch, but it is also occurs to me that the letter C, for Christ, is a crescent of sorts; the Crescent in the Sea/C.)
A Crescent in the Sea –
With Midnight to the North of Her –
And Midnight to the South of Her –
And Maelstrom – in the Sky –
It is Midnight to the North and South, the time between Sunset to the West and Sunrise to the East. And the storm above us is raging!
-/)dam Wade I)eGraff
"Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray"
Note: I would love to see a book in which the first half contained just the dozens of Dickinson poems that include the word Eternity. The latter half of the book would include the poems that contain the word Immortality. This poem would be smack dab in the middle, with a blank page on either side of it.
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