Emily Dickinson

Dead

DEAD.
THERE's something quieter than sleep
Within this inner room!

sprig upon its breast

The funeral custom of placing flowers on a corpse. Dickinson's specificity—not flowers, but a 'sprig'—suggests something small, plain, probably homegrown.

It wears a sprig upon its breast,
And will not tell its name.
Some touch it and some kiss it,
Some chafe its idle hand;
It has a simple gravity

simple gravity

Gravity as both seriousness and physical weight. The corpse has literal weight (gravity pulls it down) and metaphorical weight (the seriousness of death).

I do not understand!
While simple-hearted neighbors
Chat of the 'early dead,'

prone to periphrasis

Periphrasis = talking around something instead of naming it directly. The educated speakers can't say 'dead' so they say 'birds have fled' (a euphemism for the soul departing).

We, prone to periphrasis,
Remark that birds have fled!
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The 'It' Strategy

Dickinson never says 'corpse' or 'body'—she uses 'it' throughout. This pronoun does two things: it captures how death transforms a person into an object, and it mimics how people actually talk around death. Notice the verbs applied to 'it': touch, kiss, chafe. These are intimate actions done to something now grammatically neuter.

The poem splits observers into two groups. 'Simple-hearted neighbors' say 'early dead' directly—they use plain language. 'We, prone to periphrasis' (the educated class, probably including the speaker) can't be direct. They say 'birds have fled,' a metaphor for the soul leaving. Dickinson is noticing class differences in grief language.

The final line is doing something sneaky. 'Birds have fled' sounds poetic and elevated, but it's also more evasive than 'early dead.' The neighbors' plain speech is actually more honest. Dickinson, who refused to publish and wrote in private, is catching herself (and her class) in the act of prettifying death.

What Death Won't Tell

'Will not tell its name' is the poem's hinge. Death has a name—the neighbors say it ('dead')—but the corpse itself stays silent. This isn't metaphorical; it's literal. The dead person had a name, but now won't answer to it.

CONTEXT Dickinson wrote this around 1859, during a period when she was attending multiple funerals in Amherst. The poem's specificity—the sprig, the hand-chafing, the chatting neighbors—suggests she's describing an actual wake she attended.

The 'simple gravity / I do not understand' is the poem's confession. After all the observations, the speaker admits bafflement. The corpse's stillness isn't peaceful (it's 'quieter than sleep,' meaning unnaturally quiet). It's not dignified in a way she can process. The word 'simple' appears twice: 'simple gravity' and 'simple-hearted neighbors.' The neighbors understand something the educated speaker doesn't.