Time feels so vast that were it not

Time feels so vast that were it not
For an Eternity—
I fear me this Circumference
Engross my Finity—

To His exclusion, who prepare
By Processes of Size
For the Stupendous Vision
Of his diameters—


    -Fr858, J802, Fascicle 38, 1864

In order to understand the scope of this poem I think it helps to first get in touch with a visceral feeling of awe for Eternity. You know, you are a little kid and you are looking up at the stars and trying to understand infinity, and you realize, intuitively, that you cannot, that there are limits to your understanding. We think in terms of cause and effect. Which came first the chicken or the egg? Therefore, how could there be no beginning? No end? How are we even alive in all of that beginninglessness and endlessness? 

Does the limit of existence reveal something, or does it swallow us?

I'm thinking of Whitman's line, "The clock indicates the moment... but what does Eternity indicate?"

I can feel a tension in this poem between the poet wanting life to end because the pain of it "feels" so vast, and, simultaneously, wanting it to go on. I think we all feel that tension in our lives don't we? This poem, through the idea of Eternity, gives us relief from both our pains and our fears. The pains have an end, but they also have an end goal, as they are somehow part of the processes of a larger design. This larger design, itself, the circles that subsume our circle, gives our finite lives meaning. 

Let’s take it line by line here.

Time feels so vast that were it not
For an Eternity—

This opening puts immediately into an immense philosophical idea. Time feels vast, which might be a problem, something that would swallow us up, if it wasn’t for something far greater than time, Eternity.

The verb “feels” adds subjectivity. This is not a cosmic statement, but the poet's inner experience. 

I fear me this Circumference
Engross my Finity—

Circumference is a whole thing with Dickinson. Like the word Eternity, Circumference is one she uses over and over in her poems and that, itself, has an ever-expanding circumference of meaning. In one of her letters she tells T.W. Higginson, “My business is circumference.” In this case she seems to be using it to mean not just a limit of understanding, but that of time itself, which surrounds her very existence. She says she fears that this circumference would engross her finite life. This refers back to time. So the circumference of time would swallow her up, if it wasn’t for that thing beyond the circumference of time, Eternity.

To His exclusion, who prepare
By Processes of Size

The first stanza sets up the second. I fear I would be swallowed by time, but this would be to exclude Him (Eternity), who prepares by processes of size. Our time is a circle in service to a larger circle, which is in turn in service to a larger circle, ad infinitum. Without Eternity’s presence, He would be excluded, or at least inaccessible, because the only “space” is the closed-in temporal circle.

But He is preparing something using “processes of size," meaning He works on a scale beyond ordinary human measures. We might well ask, preparing what? But here, perhaps, is where faith comes in that these processes are not small nor simple. They’re dynamic and ever expansive.

For the Stupendous Vision
Of his diameters—

The poet intuits that whatever is being prepared for is “Stupendous.”

“Diameters” suggests lines crossing through circles, measuring their full span. If circumference is the outer boundary, diameter is a way to penetrate or bridge across circles. So His vision is not confined by the boundary of time. He spans it, sees through it, connects across it.

Dickinson recognizes her own finitude, but rather than surrendering to despair, she takes comfort in Eternity. God is not a distant or remote figure here. He actively prepares the cosmos. But His preparation is not small-scale. It happens “by Processes of Size.” His “vision” spans much more than temporal bounds, traversing them through “diameters.”

This is not simplistic consolation. It's a metaphysical model. Her finite self is preserved by positing a divine order so vast and geometrically coherent that it encompasses even the circumference of time itself. This is a metaphysical prayer, a vision of how divinity secures our finiteness. The poem builds a bridge, through “diameters,” between a limited human existence and a boundless divine reality.

Many Dickinson poems seem to be written to survive the thought and this is one of them. 

I’m reminded of this line from Rilke, “To all the unsayable sums, joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.”

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. In researching this poem I came across a charming and insightful doctoral thesis on the use of Circumference in Dickinson’s poetry by a CK Mathew. It is very warm and insightful. From the preface:


In my mind Emily Dickinson has always been the woman in white: an
enigmatic and ghostly figure who wafted through my imagination with
no let or hindrance, taking my breath away each time she appeared. I
must have been a young lad entering his teens when I came across her
poems, and though much of what she wrote was incomprehensible to
me in those early days, she fascinated me for no clearly identifiable
reason. The power of her words to stun me, to make me start and
shiver, to set me off into a reverie, was obvious from the start. As I
grew, I learned to seek for her hidden meanings, for her new insights,
the unmatched compression and concentration of her lexicon, and the
quaint strangeness of the manner of her expression.
Throughout the busy schedule of my decades in the civil service,
she used to wander in and out of my life, in the form of a collection
of poems someone had left behind.

As superannuation neared, and the prospect of doing nothing
loomed large, Emily called out to me again. It was time to finally get
to know this mystery woman better, to understand her through dogged
research and study and to finally try to make some sense of who and
what she really was. I registered myself as a Ph.D research scholar and
proposed a detailed examination of the philosophical
meaning of ‘circumference’ in her poems. Over four years I scoured
through the libraries at the University at Jaipur, the USIS at New Delhi
and the American Studies Research Centre at Hyderabad. 

Doing this along with the onerous official duties
was difficult, but Emily often proved to be the escape I longed for,
from files and meetings and the daily political machinations that had
become a part of my official life. What bliss, what joy as she beckoned
me into her world.

And thus I obtained for myself
the honour of adding the honorific of ‘Doctor’ to my name. Friends
and colleagues wondered why I was overjoyed in acquiring this new
title on a subject which has no practical use in the real world. But then
Emily had taught me that the real world was within.
It was the culmination of a life-long fascination with the poetess
who, without warning or notice, used to walk though my imagination.