Emily Dickinson

Going to heaven!

Exclamation without conviction

The exclamation mark signals excitement, but 'dim it sounds' three lines later undercuts it. Watch how she talks herself out of this certainty.

GOING to heaven!
I don't know when,
Pray do not ask me how,—
Indeed, I'm too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to heaven!—

Exclamation without conviction

The exclamation mark signals excitement, but 'dim it sounds' three lines later undercuts it. Watch how she talks herself out of this certainty.

How dim it sounds!
And yet it will be done
As sure as flocks go home at night

Shepherd's arm

Biblical image from John 10, but notice 'arm' not 'fold'—she wants the physical comfort, not just the destination.

Unto the shepherd's arm!
Perhaps you're going too!
Who knows?
If you should get there first,
Save just a little place for me
Close to the two I lost!

Two I lost

Specific number. Dickinson lost several people, but here she's counting two particular deaths that matter most to this poem.

Quotation marks

She puts 'robe' and 'crown' in quotes—treating heaven's costume party as secondhand language she's borrowing but not quite believing.

The smallest "robe" will fit me,
And just a bit of "crown;"
For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home.
I'm glad I don't believe it,
For it would stop my breath,
And I'd like to look a little more
At such a curious earth!
I am glad they did believe it
Whom I have never found
Since the mighty autumn afternoon

Mighty autumn afternoon

'Mighty' is an odd word for an afternoon. The disproportionate adjective suggests how enormous that ordinary moment became.

In the ground

Poem ends with burial, not heaven. After all that heaven talk, she leaves us—and them—in the dirt.

I left them in the ground.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Believing and the Doubting

The poem pivots on line 20: 'I'm glad I don't believe it.' Everything before pretends to certainty about heaven; everything after admits doubt. This isn't a devotional poem—it's Dickinson catching herself in the act of trying to believe.

Notice the conditional language that creeps in: 'Perhaps you're going too! / Who knows?' and 'If you should get there first.' These aren't the words of someone certain. The exclamation marks in the opening feel increasingly hollow as the poem proceeds.

The final stanza splits between 'I'm glad I don't believe it' (herself) and 'I am glad they did believe it' (the dead). She wants different things for herself and for them. For herself: more time on 'such a curious earth.' For them: the comfort of belief as they died. This is theological generosity—letting the dead have their heaven while she keeps her doubts.

CONTEXT Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems but published fewer than a dozen in her lifetime. Her father was a Calvinist, and Amherst in the 1850s-60s was in the grip of revival fervor. She attended services but never made a public profession of faith, causing family concern. Her poems circle obsessively around death, immortality, and the question of what comes after.

That Mighty Autumn Afternoon

The poem never tells us who 'the two I lost' were, but the 'mighty autumn afternoon' is specific enough to be real. Dickinson lost her father in 1874, her mother in 1882, her nephew Gilbert (age eight) in 1883. She lost friends, mentors, possible lovers. The vagueness is deliberate—this isn't about identifying bodies but about the experience of burial.

'I left them in the ground' is the poem's most devastating line because of the pronoun. Not 'they were left' or 'they were laid to rest'—I left them. She's the one who walked away from the grave. The poem ends with the speaker as survivor, the one who had to turn her back and return to 'such a curious earth.'

The quotation marks around 'robe' and 'crown' in stanza four signal borrowed language. She's trying on heaven's vocabulary like an ill-fitting costume. 'The smallest robe will fit me' sounds humble, but it's also dismissive—she's saying heaven's whole wardrobe doesn't matter. The real intimacy she wants is that 'little place' close to the two she lost, not the celestial dress-up.