Emily Dickinson

Gone

Anniversary euphemism

"Went up a year" = died one year ago today. Dickinson uses vertical motion for death throughout her work—the opposite of "went down."

WENT up a year this evening!
I recollect it well!
Amid no bells nor bravos
The bystanders will tell!
Cheerful, as to the village,
Tranquil, as to repose,
Chastened, as to the chapel,
This humble tourist rose.

Tourist metaphor

Death as tourism—temporary travel, not permanent exile. Notice how this contradicts "Did not talk of returning" two stanzas later.

Did not talk of returning,
Alluded to no time
When, were the gales propitious,
We might look for him;
Was grateful for the roses
In life's diverse bouquet,

Botanical heaven

"New species" to pick—heaven imagined as a garden with flowers unavailable on earth. Dickinson was an avid gardener who pressed hundreds of specimens.

Talked softly of new species
To pick another day
Beguiling thus the wonder,
The wondrous nearer drew;
Hands bustled at the moorings—

Nautical departure

"Moorings" = ropes tying a boat to shore. Death becomes a ship leaving port, with the dying person as passenger, not corpse.

The crowd respectful grew.
Ascended from our vision
To countenances new!

Minimal difference

After all this buildup, the speaker admits she knows almost nothing about what actually happened—just "a difference, a daisy." The poem deflates its own metaphors.

A difference, a daisy,
Is all the rest I knew!
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Death That Wasn't There

This is a first-anniversary poem written in real time—"this evening" marks one year since someone died. But Dickinson never uses the word "death" or "died." Instead, she piles up euphemisms: "went up," "rose," "returning," "ascended." The effect is strange—simultaneously evasive and precise.

The central conceit treats death as polite departure. The dead person is a "humble tourist" leaving on a trip, grateful for the flowers, talking about future botanical expeditions. Notice the social language: "bystanders," "crowd respectful," "talked softly." This sounds like someone leaving a dinner party, not dying.

CONTEXT Dickinson wrote ~1,800 poems, about 600 on death. She rarely attended funerals but was obsessed with the moment of dying—what the dying person experiences, what observers can actually see. She watched her mother's slow decline and nursed her father after his fatal stroke.

The poem's tone is relentlessly cheerful until the final stanza. "Cheerful," "Tranquil," "Chastened," "grateful," "Beguiling"—these aren't words for grief. They describe the dead person's demeanor, but also the speaker's forced composure. The exclamation points in stanza one ("well!" "tell!") sound performative, like someone insisting they're fine.

The Deflation

The final stanza admits defeat. After twenty lines of elaborate metaphors—tourism, sailing, flower-picking, ascension—the speaker confesses: "A difference, a daisy, / Is all the rest I knew!" Translation: I have no idea what death actually is. I noticed a change ("a difference") as small as a single flower ("a daisy").

"Daisy" may reference the flowers on a grave, or Dickinson's own nickname in girlhood letters. But mainly it's a unit of smallness—the tiniest botanical specimen, the most common flower. After "wondrous" and "countenances new" (faces in heaven?), she admits she saw almost nothing.

The poem performs the gap between metaphor and reality. We talk around death with euphemisms because we can't talk about it directly—we weren't there, we didn't go, we only watched someone "ascend from our vision." Every metaphor in the poem (tourist, ship, flowers) is the speaker trying to imagine what she cannot know. The final couplet drops the pretense.