Good to have had them lost

Good to have had them lost
For news that they be saved!
The nearer they departed Us
The nearer they, restored,

Shall stand to Our Right Hand—
Most precious— are the Dead—
Next precious, those that rose to go
Then thought of Us, and stayed—


    -Fr809, J901, early 1864


You can read this poem in a very straight-forward religious way, which the poem invites you to do with its use of the term “saved” and the biblical allusion to standing at God’s “Right Hand.”

If you are a believer, which most of the people in Dickinson’s circle were, then this poem might be helpful in bringing comfort to you after a loved one has died. The person isn’t lost, they are saved in heaven! The nearer they were to us when we died means the nearer they will be to us in heaven where they will stand with us at God’s right hand. 

But then the final two lines complicate this idea. Why call out as “next precious” those that choose to stay behind? What does it mean to choose to stay behind because of the "thought of Us?" Huh? What does this have to do with standing at the right hand of God after death? This is a left turn that throws everything else in the poem into question. Suddenly we wonder if we are talking about actual death here, or, something else, like, perhaps, the loss of a relationship. After all, to choose to stay sounds like something a lover, or friend, would do, not a dying person. 

If the loss is referring, then, to the loss of a lover, everything else in the poem takes on a new meaning. Being “saved!” and at “Our Right Hand,” for instance, now has a more sly and wry meaning.

If this is a poem written to a lover, then the one that “chooses” to stay at the end is the unassuming hero of this story.

The “most precious” are those gone from us not because they were the most loving, but because their absence is total. They are beyond failure, or even forgetting. In contrast, the living, even those who choose to stay, exist in an unstable world. Their love is still being tested. Their presence is valuable, but still unfolding.

Those who “rose to go / Then thought of Us, and stayed” are precious in a different way. Dickinson is drawing our attention to a deliberate choice. They had the freedom to leave, but chose to remain for our sake. That act of self-sacrifice makes all the difference. By calling them “next precious,” Dickinson’s not diminishing them, but giving them a different kind of reverence.

By ranking the “dead” and the stayers, Dickinson helps us to confront the complexity of love. Do we most value those who are gone? Or do we cherish most those who could have left and didn’t?

Perhaps Dickinson is subtly critiquing us. We tend to overvalue what we’ve lost and undervalue what we still have. So maybe she’s saying to look closely at those who stayed? They are not forgotten, they are “next precious.” Don’t wait until they’re gone to make them most.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. It's noteworthy how often Dickinson subverts religious language to talk about the interpersonal. We mark that in Emily's earliest love letters to Sue, when they were 19 year old school friends, she often conflated religious and romantic language. I tend to read the poem at hand as part of a tradition of love poems to Sue that continued a decades-long conversation. Using religious language, complicated by the fact that Sue was a professed believer and Dickinson wasn't, ultimately underscores the nature of their human relationship by comparison.

P.P.S. One more thought. Might this poem be a warning to its recipient? "If the precious one I love leaves me, I'm going to love the "next precious" one I'm with. Probably not, but the suggestion is there with that word "next."