Poem #1

“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” (124)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers -

Untouched by Morning -

and untouched by noon -

Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection,

Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone -

Grand go the Years,

In the Crescent above them -

Worlds scoop their Arcs -

and Firmaments - row -

Diadems - drop -

And Doges surrender -

Soundless as Dots,

On a Disk of Snow.

In all honesty I do like Emily Dickinson, but she can be really hard to understand sometimes… I wish I had an instant translator for her poems. Well, an instant translator for poems of various historical periods. The language is beautiful, but unnecessary and unused in modern times. It is a foreign language to us now. Anyway, the seventh line is my favorite I think because of the fact that the word “crescent” is in it. I don’t know why, but crecent is an awesome word to me. Moreover, how I Interpreted this line was about how the Earth’s surface is sloped and curved like a crescent. So if this crescent was about “them”, meaning the dead, then they obviously were below it. In their strong and safe chambers. I think it is a little interesting that I have never really thought of the dead as dead, but while reading this poem it sort of forced me to think in that way. When I think of being dead or the dead, I still think of people being alive in memory. As long as there is a memory or evidence somewhere, than the person who has passed hasn’t died. They are still alive within the memories of them. This makes me think of the short story we read, “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty. The woman still did this routine because she believed wholeheartedly that this boy was still alive because he existed in her memory. Authors like Hemingway and Faulkner still live on through their writing because they used their life’s events as inspiration for their stories. Anyway, I think that this line from the poem makes the final resting place for the dead seem like something elegant, just because of my connotation of the word “crescent”.