Emily Dickinson

Asleep

ASLEEP.
AS far from pity as complaint,
As cool to speech as stone,
As numb to revelation

as if my trade

Dickinson ran her father's household after her mother's illness—domestic work was literally her trade. But 'bone' suggests death's profession, not housework.

As if my trade were bone.
As far from time as history,
As near yourself to-day
As children to the rainbow's scarf,

children to the rainbow's scarf

Children can't actually reach a rainbow no matter how close it looks. The comparison measures impossible distance, not nearness.

Or sunset's yellow play

eyelids in the sepulchre

Dead eyes can't see sunset. This is the poem's turn—all those 'as far from' comparisons now apply to a corpse.

To eyelids in the sepulchre.
How still the dancer lies,

How still the dancer

First mention of a person. The entire poem has been describing this dancer's stillness through negatives—what she can't feel or do.

While color's revelations break,
And blaze the butterflies!
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Grammar of Distance

The first nine lines are one sentence—a massive pile-up of similes measuring how far the speaker is from normal human responses. Each "as" adds another layer of numbness: as far from pity as complaint (equally removed from both feeling sorry and protesting), as cool to speech as stone (stone doesn't respond to being talked to), as numb to revelation (can't be surprised or enlightened).

The comparisons escalate. Being "far from time" is abstract, but "as near yourself to-day / As children to the rainbow's scarf" is cruelly specific. Children think they can touch rainbows—they can't. The speaker is that unreachably distant from her own present moment.

Then "eyelids in the sepulchre" (tomb) reveals the game. This whole time she's been describing death, or something so close to death it makes no difference. The sunset's beauty means nothing to closed eyes in a grave. All those abstract "as far from" statements suddenly have a body—a corpse that can't see, feel, or respond.

The Dancer and the Butterflies

The last three lines switch to third person—"the dancer" instead of "I." Dickinson often called herself a dancer in letters, and she wore white dresses exclusively in her later years, a detail her neighbors found strange. Whether this is self-portrait or not, the dancer matters because dancers are the opposite of still.

The final image: "color's revelations break, / And blaze the butterflies!" Life explodes around the motionless dancer. Revelations echoes line 3's "numb to revelation"—the world keeps revealing itself, butterflies keep blazing with color, but the dancer is past noticing. The exclamation point is Dickinson's—rare for her, and here it marks the gap between the world's energy and the dancer's absolute stillness.

The poem never says whether this is literal death, depression, or emotional shutdown. The clinical tone ("as cool to speech as stone") could describe any of those states. What's certain: the speaker has measured the exact distance between herself and the living world, and it's the distance between a butterfly and a tomb.