Emily Dickinson

Going

Conditional syntax

The double 'or' creates uncertainty—which night? Any night? The vagueness suggests death doesn't need special circumstances.

ON such a night, or such a night,
Would anybody care
If such a little figure
Slipped quiet from its chair,
So quiet, oh, how quiet!
That nobody might know
But that the little figure
Rocked softer, to and fro?

Rocking chair image

The chair keeps rocking after the figure stops—a haunting detail. Empty motion continuing after the person is gone.

On such a dawn, or such a dawn,
Would anybody sigh
That such a little figure
Too sound asleep did lie

Chanticleer

Medieval/literary term for rooster. Dickinson uses high diction for a barnyard bird—typical of her mixing registers.

For chanticleer to wake it,—
Or stirring house below,
Or giddy bird in orchard,
Or early task to do?
There was a little figure plump

Past tense shift

Sudden switch from hypothetical future ('would anybody') to completed past ('There was'). The death has already happened.

Knoll

A knoll is a small hill—often where graves are placed. She's describing a child's body as 'plump for every little knoll.'

For every little knoll,
Busy needles, and spools of thread,
And trudging feet from school.
Playmates, and holidays, and nuts,
And visions vast and small.
Strange that the feet so precious charged
Should reach so small a goal!

Feet/goal paradox

Feet 'charged' with preciousness (childhood potential) reach only a 'small goal' (small grave). The economics of early death.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Hypothetical Grammar of Death

Dickinson builds this poem on conditional verbs—'would anybody care,' 'would anybody sigh'—that create eerie distance. She's not describing a death directly but asking whether anyone would notice if it happened. This grammatical choice does two things: it makes the death feel inevitable (not 'if' but 'when'), and it focuses attention on the social question rather than the event itself. Would the world pause for a child's death?

The answer the poem gives is devastating: probably not. The child slips away 'so quiet' that nobody might know, too 'sound asleep' for the rooster or the 'stirring house below' to wake. Dickinson uses euphemisms—'quiet,' 'asleep'—but undercuts them with specificity. This isn't peaceful rest; it's a death so unremarkable the household routine continues.

Then in stanza five, the tense shifts without warning: 'There was a little figure plump.' Past tense. Done. The hypothetical collapses into fact, and we realize we've been reading an elegy all along. The conditional grammar was a way of approaching unbearable reality sideways.

Dickinson's Child Death Poems

Dickinson wrote several poems about children dying, unusual for a woman who never had children. The mid-19th century saw high childhood mortality—roughly 20% of children died before age five. Every family knew this loss. Her specific details here ('busy needles,' 'trudging feet from school,' 'playmates and holidays and nuts') suggest she's writing about a real child, possibly a neighbor or relative.

The final stanza's accounting is particularly Dickinsonian: she lists the child's activities like an inventory, then measures them against the 'small goal' of a grave. The word 'charged' is commercial language—feet entrusted with precious cargo (a whole life's potential). The return on investment: a small plot on a knoll. This is Dickinson doing her characteristic economic metaphor for death, treating life as currency that gets spent too soon.

Notice she never names the child or specifies gender. The repeated 'little figure' keeps the child abstract, almost like a doll. This generalization makes the poem more devastating—it could be any child, every child who died young in her era.