Emily Dickinson

Behind me dips Eternity,

BEHIND me dips Eternity,
Before me Immortality,

Mathematical term

"Term" means both a time period and the middle element in a mathematical equation. She's literally the variable between two infinities.

Myself the term between—
Death but the drift of Eastern gray

Directional death

East = sunrise = birth. Death moves east-to-west like the sun, dissolving as it approaches the actual west (eternity). She's reversing the expected direction.

Dissolving into dawn away
Before the West begins.
'Tis Kingdom—afterwards—they say,
In perfect pauseless monarchy,

Trinity language

"Son of none" contradicts Christian theology where Christ is Son of God. "Diversify / In duplicate divine" suggests the Trinity's three-in-one, but something's off about her phrasing.

Whose Prince is son of none—
Himself His dateless dynasty,
Himself, Himself diversify
In duplicate divine.
'Tis Miracle before me, then,
Then Miracle behind, between,
A crescent is the sea

Crescent geometry

A crescent has two points. She's the curved middle between two "midnights"—past and future both dark, unknowable. The sea image makes her position liquid, unstable.

With midnight to the north of her
And midnight to the south of her,

Maelstrom above

Not in the sea where you'd expect it—in the sky. Heaven itself is chaotic, a whirlpool. This contradicts the "perfect pauseless monarchy" two stanzas earlier.

And maelstrom in the sky.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Spatial Theology

Dickinson maps the afterlife as directional space. Eternity "dips" behind (past tense, downward), Immortality stretches "before" (future, forward). She's stuck at the hinge point—"the term between"—which borrows from mathematics where a term is the known quantity in an equation.

The death-as-dawn image reverses normal symbolism. Death arrives as "Eastern gray" (dawn light) but "dissolves" before reaching the West. Normally sunset (west) symbolizes death, but she inverts it: death is the gray before sunrise, disappearing as true dawn (immortality) approaches. The West becomes the starting point of eternity, not its end.

CONTEXT Dickinson wrote obsessively about the "flood subject" of immortality but rarely attended church after her twenties. This poem's geography suggests she's working out salvation logistics on her own terms, using compass points like algebraic proofs.

The Trinity Problem

Stanza two describes heaven's monarchy with deliberately broken theology. "Prince is son of none" contradicts the Nicene Creed—Christ is explicitly the Son of God. "Dateless dynasty" and "Himself, Himself diversify" gesture toward the Trinity (God in three persons) but the repetition of "Himself" sounds mechanical, not mystical.

The word "'Tis" appears three times, always starting explanations: "'Tis Kingdom," "'Tis Miracle." It's hearsay language—"they say" appears in line 7. She's reporting Christian doctrine, not endorsing it. The final stanza replaces theological certainty with "maelstrom in the sky"—heaven as chaotic whirlpool, not "perfect pauseless monarchy."

The crescent sea image is her actual position: curved between two points of darkness ("midnight to the north... midnight to the south"). She's liquid, temporary, caught between two unknowable absolutes while the supposed paradise above her spins like a storm drain.